Nobel Prize Listening Comprehension Exercise | 8th English Unit 4

Nobel Prize - Listening Comprehension

8th English | Unit 4: Prose: My Reminiscence

Listen to the Passage

Listen to the passage carefully and answer the following questions.

Nobel Prize

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. The foundations for the prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Committee, in fact, a notoriously conservative body which among other things had a marked antipathy to pure sciences, especially to Mathematical Physics. Restrained by a clause in Alfred Nobel’s will that the prize should go to the person whose ‘discovery or invention’ shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind, the committee initially ignored the great theoretical advances in Physics. Wracked, no doubt, by guilt that he had become a merchant of death through his invention of dynamite and smokeless powder and plagued by sadistic fantasies of destruction, the Swedish chemist, engineer and aspiring poet, Alfred Nobel, who has been described as Europe’s richest vagabond, left his colossal fortune to the cause of progress in human knowledge. Five prizes were installed, one each for literature (‘to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature, the most outstanding Work of an idealistic tendency), Physics, Chemistry, medicine and peace to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations for abolition or reduction of armies, and for holding or promotion of peace’.

Questions

1. The Nobel Committee has been called a conservative body because

a. it is conservative in the choice of subjects.

b. its members believe in conservative ideology.

c. its members are old fashioned.

d. it awards prizes only to those people who adopt a conservative approach.

Show Answer

(d) it awards prizes only to those people who adopt a conservative approach

2. In the beginning, the Nobel Committee ignored the great advances in theoretical physics because

a. they were different from other branches of physics.

b. they were concerned with the theory and did not suggest its application.

c. the Committee felt that the discovery and invention in the field did not contribute to the benefit of mankind.

d. they proved to be merchants of death and hence dangerous to mankind.

Show Answer

(c) the Committee felt that the discovery and invention in the field did not contribute to the benefit of mankind.

3. The noble prize would not be given to

a. a diplomat who negotiated a peace settlement

b. a doctor who discovered a vaccine

c. a composer who composed a symphony

d. an author who wrote a novel

Show Answer

(c) a composer who composed a symphony

4. Alfred Nobel left his colossal fortune to the cause of progress in human knowledge because he

a. was ‘Europe’s richest vagabond’

b. were a chemist, engineer and an aspiring poet

c. felt guilty for having invented highly destructive things

d. felt guilty for having earned so much money

Show Answer

(c) felt guilty for having invented highly destructive things