How come there is a Nobel prize for Economics but not math?
The Nobel Prize for math is generally considered to be another award, called the Fields Medal, or alternatively another distinction, the Abel Prize. The reason why the Nobel doesn’t include a Math section isn’t entirely clear. Speculations range from what you mentioned, about Alfred Nobel (the creator of the Awards) just not thinking all that much of Mathematics, at least in terms of how they could help humanity (the most likely explanation), to sniggering gossip about how he used to fancy a gal who turned him down for another guy who just happened to be a mathematician (the least likely, for a number of reasons, but still a fun little urban legend). As for literature – well, literature DOES directly impact humanity. The yahoo answers format doesn’t really lends itself to this sort of discussion, but if you want to talk about what affects people most directly, I’d say that out of all the disciplines in the prize, literature is second only to medicine/physiology in terms of how it affec
