Awards & Honours Mixed Quiz: Set 21

The correct answer is B, the Philippines. The award was instituted in 1957 by the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, President of the Philippines, who died in an air crash that year, and it is presented at Manila to persons of Asia for greatness of spirit in service to the people. Vinoba Bhave was the first Indian recipient, in 1958. A is wrong because Indonesia's first President was Sukarno and no such award is named after him. C is wrong because Thailand is a monarchy and has no presidency. D is wrong because Vietnam's leader of that era was Ho Chi Minh, and no international award of this kind bears his name. The award is often described in the press as the Nobel Prize of Asia.

The correct answer is B, 1979. The Pritzker Architecture Prize was founded in 1979 by Jay A. Pritzker and Cindy Pritzker through the Hyatt Foundation of the United States, and the first laureate in that year was Philip Johnson of the United States. The award carries one hundred thousand dollars and a bronze medallion inscribed with the Vitruvian words for firmness, usefulness and beauty. A is wrong because 1969 is the year the Booker Prize for fiction was instituted. C is wrong because 1989 is the year of the Goldman Environmental Prize, known as the Green Nobel, and of the Praemium Imperiale. D is wrong because 1999 has no major international prize attached to it and is placed as filler. Candidates should hold the field and the founding year together for each award in this chapter.

The correct answer is A, the best young player of the year. The Kopa Trophy was introduced in 2018 and is named after Raymond Kopa, the French forward who won the Ballon d’Or in 1958; its first winner was Kylian Mbappe of France. Option B is wrong because the award for the best goalkeeper is the Yashin Trophy, given from 2019, whose first winner was Alisson Becker of Brazil. Option C is wrong because the leading scorer receives the Gerd Muller Trophy, given from 2021, whose first winner was Robert Lewandowski of Poland. Option D is wrong because the award for the best woman footballer is the Ballon d’Or Feminin, given from 2018, whose first winner was Ada Hegerberg of Norway. Four trophies, four years of introduction: learn them as a set.

The correct answer is B, the Navy. The Sena Medal, the Nao Sena Medal and the Vayu Sena Medal were instituted in 1960 for individual acts of gallantry or exceptional devotion to duty, one for each service, and the word Nao in the name marks the Navy just as Vayu marks the Air Force. Option A is wrong because the Army's award is the plain Sena Medal. Option C is wrong because the Air Force award is the Vayu Sena Medal. Option D is wrong because the medal is not reserved for the Coast Guard, which has its own decorations for gallantry and distinguished service. A question in this shape is answered by translating the name, which is why the Hindi words in these titles are worth learning.

The correct answer is B, M. S. Swaminathan. The World Food Prize was created in 1986 at the initiative of Norman Borlaug to honour work that improves the quality, quantity or availability of food, and the Indian agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan, a leader of the Green Revolution in India, received the very first prize in 1987. A is wrong because Norman Borlaug founded the prize and had already received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, so he was not himself a laureate of it. C is wrong because Verghese Kurien, the architect of Operation Flood and of the dairy cooperative movement, won the World Food Prize in 1989. D is wrong because Rattan Lal, the soil scientist, won it much later, in 2020. The founding year, the founder and the first laureate are three separate facts.

The correct answer is B, one crore rupees. The Gandhi Peace Prize carries one crore rupees in cash, together with a citation, a plaque and a piece of traditional handicraft or handloom, and the money may be paid in any convertible currency because the prize is open to citizens of every country. Option A is wrong, and it is the trap in the question, because twenty five lakh rupees is the amount attached to the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, given by the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust. Option C is wrong; no figure of fifty lakh rupees is attached to this prize. Option D is wrong because the award with no cash at all is the Sardar Patel National Unity Award, which carries only a medal and a citation. Keep the three amounts as a set so the options cannot mislead you.

The correct answer is A, Ada Hegerberg of Norway. The women’s award was introduced in 2018, more than sixty years after the men’s, and the Norwegian forward, then with Lyon, was its first winner. Option B is wrong because Megan Rapinoe of the United States won the FIFA and Ballon d’Or honours of a later year and is a strong distractor for anyone who remembers the World Cup of 2019. Option C is wrong because Marta of Brazil was named FIFA World Player of the Year several times before the women’s Ballon d’Or existed, which is exactly the confusion the option is placed to create. Option D is wrong because Alexia Putellas of Spain won the award in later years, not in its first year.

The correct answer is A, Gobind Behari Lal. A science correspondent who had gone from Punjab to the United States, Gobind Behari Lal shared the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1937 for his coverage of a scientific meeting, and he is remembered as the first Indian-born winner of the prize. Option B is wrong because the photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was part of a Reuters team honoured much later, in 2018, for pictures of the Rohingya crisis. Option C is wrong because Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, which is a literature award and later than 1937. Option D is wrong because Dar Yasin was one of the Associated Press photographers honoured in 2020 for images from Kashmir.

The correct answer is B, Alternative Nobel. The Right Livelihood Award was instituted in 1980 in Sweden to honour work on the practical problems the Nobel Prizes were seen to overlook, and it is presented in Stockholm; the Chipko Movement received it in 1987 and Ela Bhatt of the Self Employed Women's Association in 1984. A is wrong because the Green Nobel is the usual description of the Goldman Environmental Prize, founded in 1989 for grassroots environmental activists. C is wrong because the Nobel of Asia is how the Ramon Magsaysay Award is described. D is wrong because the Oscars of Science is the nickname of the Breakthrough Prize, founded in 2012 by technology entrepreneurs. These nicknames are asked as often as the official names.

The correct answer is A, Major Dhyan Chand. National Sports Day is observed on 29 August, the birth anniversary of the hockey player Major Dhyan Chand, who was part of the Indian teams that won Olympic gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936, and the national sports awards are conferred around this day. Option B is wrong because Sachin Tendulkar, born in April, was the first sportsperson to receive the Bharat Ratna but has no national day in his name. Option C is wrong because P. T. Usha is the athlete remembered for her near miss in the hurdles at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984. Option D is wrong because Vishwanathan Anand is the chess grandmaster who was the first recipient of the Khel Ratna. Link 29 August, Dhyan Chand, National Sports Day and the sports awards as one chain.

The correct answer is C, 2010 to 2015. France Football and FIFA joined their two awards into one for those six years, so the winner of each of those years holds the FIFA Ballon d’Or; the partnership ended and the two awards were given separately again from 2016, when FIFA began The Best FIFA Men’s Player. Option A is wrong because 1991 is the year the FIFA World Player of the Year began, and its first winner was Lothar Matthaus of Germany, but the two awards were then quite separate. Option B is wrong because 2007 is the year the Ballon d’Or was opened to players at clubs anywhere in the world, a different reform. Option D is wrong because 2016 is when the merger ended, not when it ran.

The correct answer is C, 1952. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's national academy of music, dance and drama, was created by a government resolution of 31 May 1952 and formally inaugurated on 28 January 1953 by President Rajendra Prasad. It was the first of the three national academies; the Sahitya Akademi for literature and the Lalit Kala Akademi for fine arts followed in 1954. Its annual awards, the Akademi Puraskar, have been given to performing artists since 1952, which makes it the oldest national honour for the performing arts in India. The higher honour, the Akademi Ratna or Fellowship, was started in 1954. A is wrong because 1961 is the year the Arjuna Award for sports began. B is wrong because 1950 is when the Constitution came into force, not when the Akademi was formed. D is wrong because 1959 is the year the National School of Drama was set up, not the start of the awards. Exam tip: Sangeet Natak Akademi 1952 (awards from 1952); Sahitya Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi 1954.

The correct answer is C, Gandhi Peace Prize. The Gandhi Peace Prize was instituted by the Government of India in 1995, the one hundred and twenty-fifth birth anniversary year of Mahatma Gandhi, and although foreign nationals and institutions may receive it, it is an Indian national award given by the Government of India. A is wrong as an answer because the Pulitzer Prize, created by the will of Joseph Pulitzer and first awarded in 1917, is administered by Columbia University in the United States. B is wrong because the Templeton Prize is awarded by the John Templeton Foundation. D is wrong because the Abel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Examiners place an Indian award among international ones precisely to test this distinction.

The correct answer is B, Physics. Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman received the Prize in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light, in which a part of the scattered light changes wavelength, an effect that carries his name and gave chemists a powerful method of studying molecules.

Option A, Chemistry, is the category in which Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won in 2009 for work on the structure of the ribosome, and the similarity of the names makes this the most common error in the question. Option C, Medicine, was Har Gobind Khorana's category in 1968. Option D, Economic Sciences, was Amartya Sen's in 1998 and Abhijit Banerjee's in 2019. Fix each Indian laureate with a category and a year, because the paper asks for the pairing far more often than for the achievement.

The correct answer is A, the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy. The International Cricket Council began its annual awards in 2004, and the cricketer of the year receives the trophy named after the great all-rounder of the West Indies; the first winner was Rahul Dravid of India, and Sachin Tendulkar, Ravichandran Ashwin and Virat Kohli have also received it. Option B is wrong because the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award is for the women’s cricketer of the year, given from 2017. Option C is wrong because the Sir Vivian Richards Trophy is a series trophy rather than an individual award of the year. Option D is wrong because the Don Bradman name is attached to museum honours and to series trophies, not to the ICC award for cricketer of the year.

The correct answer is A, father of Indian cinema. Dhundiraj Govind Phalke is called the father of Indian cinema because he made Raja Harishchandra in 1913, the first full length Indian feature film, and went on to make many more, building the craft of film making in the country almost from nothing.

Option B, father of Indian theatre, is not a title attached to Phalke; the modern Indian stage traces its growth to a number of regional figures and companies rather than to him. Option C, father of Indian photography, is not his title either, although he did train in printing and photography before turning to films. Option D, father of Indian television, is unrelated, as television broadcasting in India began in 1959, long after Phalke's time.

The correct answer is A, the Association for Computing Machinery. The Turing Award has been given by that body since 1966, is named after the British mathematician Alan Turing, and is widely described as the Nobel Prize of computing; Raj Reddy, of Indian origin, received it in 1994 for work in artificial intelligence. B is wrong because the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers gives its own medals and awards in engineering but not the Turing Award. C is wrong because the Royal Society of London awards the Copley Medal and elects fellows, and has no connection with this prize. D is wrong because the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awards the Abel Prize in mathematics. Keeping the awarding body with each prize is the quickest way to answer such questions.

The correct answer is A, Lothar Matthaus. The German midfielder, captain of the side that won the World Cup of 1990, was the first FIFA World Player of the Year when the award began in 1991; FIFA gave it until 2015, with the Ballon d’Or years of 2010 to 2015 in between, and replaced it with The Best FIFA Men’s Player in 2016. Option B is wrong because Roberto Baggio of Italy won the award in 1993. Option C is wrong because Marco van Basten of the Netherlands won the Ballon d’Or three times in the late nineteen eighties, before this FIFA award existed, which is what makes him a tempting option. Option D is wrong because Romario of Brazil won it in 1994, the year of his World Cup.

The correct answer is A, Tomb of Sand. Geetanjali Shree's novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, won the International Booker Prize in 2022, becoming the first book originally written in Hindi, and in any Indian language, to receive that award. B is wrong because The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, written in English, won the Booker Prize in 2008. C is wrong because The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, also in English, won in 1997. D is wrong because The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai won in 2006. The International Booker Prize is the separate award for a book translated into English, and the translator shares the prize equally with the author. For revision, keep the two awards apart: the Booker Prize is for fiction written in English, while the International Booker Prize is for a work translated into English from any language.

The correct answer is A, the FIFA Puskas Award. FIFA introduced it in 2009 for the most beautiful goal of the year, and it is named after Ferenc Puskas of Hungary, the forward of the great side of the nineteen fifties. Option B is wrong because the European Golden Shoe, given since 1968, goes to the leading scorer of the European league season on a points system that weights the different leagues. Option C is wrong because the Gerd Muller Trophy, given at the Ballon d’Or ceremony from 2021, also rewards the number of goals rather than the beauty of one. Option D is wrong because the Pichichi Trophy is the award of the Spanish daily Marca for the leading scorer of the Spanish league, again a matter of counting goals.