Awards & Honours GK Questions with Answers – Page 16

He is a physician and researcher of Indian origin, and his book The Emperor of All Maladies is a history of cancer written for general readers.

Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and provided for the prizes in his will; the first awards were made in 1917 by Columbia University.

Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper publisher who owned the New York World, left money in his will both for a school of journalism and for the prizes, and Columbia University in New York administers the awards on the advice of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

The description is used because the award honours a lifetime of selfless service in Asia, in fields such as government service, public service and community leadership, in the manner in which the Nobel Prizes honour service to humanity.

He received the award in 1958, in the very first year it was given, for community leadership, in recognition of the Bhoodan movement in which he walked from village to village asking landowners to give land to the landless.

The trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York set up the award in 1957, the year in which President Ramon Magsaysay died, and the first awards were given in 1958.

Ramon Magsaysay was President of the Philippines and died in an aircraft crash in March 1957. The award was created in his memory later that year, and it is given at Manila, the Philippine capital, on 31 August, his birth anniversary.

The awards are conferred at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, and the recipient receives the medal or statuette, a certificate or scroll of honour and a cash prize from the President.

Instituted in 2009, it recognises the organisations that build sport rather than the people who play it, under heads such as identifying and nurturing young talent, providing employment to sportspersons and developing sports infrastructure.

The weightlifter received the Khel Ratna in 1994–95, becoming the first woman to be honoured with it, and she went on to win the bronze at the Sydney Olympics of 2000, India’s first Olympic medal by a woman.

Instituted in 1956–57 and named after independent India’s first education minister, it is the oldest of the national sports honours and the only one given to a university, which makes it a favourite question.

Instituted in 2002, it honours sportspersons for the whole of their contribution to their sport, including what they have done for it after their playing days ended, which sets it apart from the awards given for recent performance.

He was born on 29 August 1905, and India has observed National Sports Day on that date since 2012; the national sports awards are tied to the day and are conferred by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

In August 2021 the Government renamed the country’s highest sporting honour the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, after the hockey player whose teams won Olympic gold at Amsterdam in 1928, Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936.

The Dronacharya Award began in 1985, twenty-four years after the Arjuna Award, and it was the first national honour meant for coaches rather than players; the Lifetime category was added later so that a long career of coaching could be recognised separately from recent work.

Instituted in 1985, the Dronacharya Award honours coaches whose trainees have won medals at the Olympic, Asian or Commonwealth Games or at a World Championship, and it is given in two categories, Regular and Lifetime.

The Arjuna Award is the oldest of the national sports awards and honours a sportsperson for consistently outstanding performance over the four years before the award; the recipient is given a bronze statuette of Arjuna, a scroll of honour and a cash prize.

The award was instituted in 1991–92 and the chess grandmaster received it in that very first year, which is the fact papers return to most often.

He received the Dronacharya Award of 2021 in the Regular category for table tennis, the award given to coaches whose trainees reach the podium at the Olympic, Asian, Commonwealth or World Championship level.

The wrestler Vinesh Phogat was nominated in 2019 for the Laureus World Sports Award in the Breakthrough of the Year category, the first Indian athlete to be shortlisted in that category.