Nobel week

President’s blog 12 December, 2023.

We are just coming out of this year’s Nobel Week, the big annual celebration with focus on science, literature and peace. On Thursday the Nobel lecture in physiology or medicine and the Nobel lecture in literature were held. On Friday morning the queue was winding outside the Aula Magna, where the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was organizing the Nobel lectures in physics and chemistry as well as the lecture in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel.

Festivities were happening during the weekend – The Nobel concert on Friday night, a reception at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ and the Nobel Foundation on Saturday and of course the Nobel Day itself with the award ceremony and the banquet. It is sometimes said that it is only the celebration itself that matters here in Sweden. This is strongly contradicted by the great interest in the lectures, with a packed auditorium and an audience of mixed ages.

After having participated as President and guest in the Nobel Week’s various activities during all these years, now, with my new assignment as chairman of the Nobel Foundation, I have been given a hosting role, where I also get the opportunity to meet the prize winners a little more informally behind the scenes. Not everyone seems particularly amused to be in focus. But it is clear that they all have something in common; the contagious passion for their own work and for conveying their insights to others, and their perseverance.

In times of indifference or, at worst, contempt for science, the Nobel Week is a powerful reminder of the great importance of basic research to society, whether it concerns attosecond physics – to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, Anne L’Huillier – or the discovery and development of quantum dots – to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus, Alexej Jekimov. The achievements that are rewarded, sometimes far in retrospect, hardly had any known applications at the time of the scientific discovery. Not infrequently, the horizon of possibilities for whether and how they could be applied has also widened over the years.

This year’s prize in physiology or medicine – to Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman – which was the basis for the rapid development of mRNA vaccines during the covid 19 pandemic, is an unusually clear example, but the hatred and threats to which these prize winners have been subjected also shows a frightening polarization where science is reduced to opinions in a debate. The recipient of the prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, Claudia Goldin, does the opposite; through her research, she substantiates what is often presented as mere opinion. Today, it is more important than ever that researchers do not tire in advancing knowledge and truth.

At the same time, the literature prize shows that the search for knowledge and truth can also be pursued in other ways than those of science. When the focus, as in Sweden today, one-sidedly tends to end up on what technological or other benefit can be quickly extracted from research, literature and this year’s prize winner Jon Fosse remind us of the complexity and richness of reality.

It happens that the Nobel Peace Prize gets a little overshadowed here in Stockholm. But this year’s award, whose recipient Narges Mohammadi is imprisoned in Iran, really deserves to be highlighted – it rewards a tireless fight against the oppression of women in her homeland, for human rights and freedom.

Astrid Söderbergh Widding
President