Sully Prudhomme elected to the Académie française in 1881. Another distinction, "Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur", was to follow in 1895. After, "Le Bonheur", Prudhomme turned from poetry to write essays on aesthetics and philosophy. He published two important essays: "L'Expression dans les beaux-arts" (1884) and "Réflexions sur l'art des vers" (1892), a series of articles on Blaise Pascal in "La Revue des Deux Mondes" (1890), and an article on free will ("La Psychologie du Libre-Arbitre", 1906) in the "Revue de métaphysique et de morale". The first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (given "in special recognition of his poetic
Nobel Prize A group including 42 Swedish writers, artists, and literary critics protested against this decision, having expected Leo Tolstoy to be awarded. Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticised this prize because they consider Prudhomme a mediocre poet. Feldman's explanation is that most of the Academy members preferred Victorian literature and thus selected a Victorian poet. The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist and microbiologist Emil von Behring. During the 1890s, von Behring developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria, which until then was causing thousands of deaths each year. The first Nobel Peace Prize went to the Swiss