Not so long ago I enjoyed the company, for a glorious few days at Chateau Lalinde, of my sister and her husband who visited from Germany. Little did we know then, as we sat on the terrace of the chateau, enjoying the beautiful late summer weather, that in a few weeks' time he would receive 'the' telephone call from Sweden to inform him that he had won the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2008!
Congratulations Harald! I am proud to have the hand print of a Nobel winner on my wall! I am privileged to know such a very special person!
Harald zur Hauzen won the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2008 "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer" which in turn has made it possible to develop the vaccination against cervical cancer -- a disease that affects at least 500,000 women per year.
Listen to the interview with Harald just after he had heard the news:
Interview with Harald zur Hauzen
Nobel Prize Announcements
The announcement of the Nobel Laureates for the year is made on the same day that the Nobel Prize-Awarding Institutions choose from among the names recommended by the respective Nobel Committees. Immediately after the vote, a press conference is held by the concerned Nobel Prize Awarder.
Nomination for the Nobel Prizes
Each year the respective Nobel Committees send individual invitations to thousands of members of academies, university professors, scientists from numerous countries, previous Nobel Laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others, asking them to submit candidates for the Nobel Prizes for the coming year. These nominators are chosen in such a way that as many countries and universities as possible are represented over time.
Announcements of the 2008 Nobel Prizes and The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be held on the following dates:
Physiology or Medicine - Monday, October 6, 11:30 a.m. CET at the earliest
Physics - Tuesday, October 7, 11:45 a.m. CET at the earliest
Chemistry - Wednesday, October 8, 11:45 a.m. CET at the earliest
Literature - Thursday, October 9, 1:00 p.m. CET at the earliest
Peace - Friday, October 10, 11:00 a.m. CET
Economics - Monday, October 13, 1:00 p.m. CET at the earliest
The Magic WeekDecoration
In the first week of December, all roads lead to Oslo and Stockholm, where the year’s Nobel Laureates are swept up in a whirlwind of activities that culminates in the Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies and the Nobel Banquet. These memorable events are recounted here by the Laureates.
The Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies and Banquets
Since 1901, the Nobel Prizes have been presented to the Laureates at ceremonies on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. As stipulated in the will of the Swedish-born inventor and international industrialist Alfred Nobel, which was opened after his death in 1896, the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and Literature are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, while the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway. Since 1969 an additional prize has been awarded at the ceremony in Stockholm, The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which was established in 1968 on the occasion of the Riksbank's 300th anniversary. The Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm has, almost without exception, taken place at the Stockholm Concert Hall (Stockholms Konserthus) since 1926. In Oslo, the ceremony was for many years held at the Nobel Institute. From 1947 till 1990, the setting was the auditorium of the University of Oslo. In 1990 the event moved to the Oslo City Hall.
Stockholm Concert Hall
Inside the Stockholm Concert Hall.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation
Photo: Boo Jonsson
At the Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, presentation speeches extoll the Laureates and their discovery or work, after which His Majesty the King of Sweden hands each Laureate a diploma and a medal. The Ceremony is followed by a banquet at the Stockholm City Hall (Stockholms Stadshus) for about 1,300 people, including 250 students. With a few exceptions, the Nobel Banquet has taken place at the City Hall since 1930. The Nobel Festivities in Stockholm are arranged by the Nobel Foundation and are primarily an academic celebration focusing on science and literature. In addition to the Nobel Laureates and their families, Their Majesties the King and Queen and other members of the Royal Family of Sweden are guests of honour at both the Prize Award Ceremony and the Banquet. Representatives of the Swedish Government and Parliament also participate. International guests enjoy priority, especially those who represent the sciences and cultural life. Swedish guests are people who participate in Nobel-related functions in one capacity or another, aid the sciences through donations or otherwise support the Foundation and the Prize Awarding Institutions.
Inside the Stockholm City Hall.Copyright © The Nobel Foundation
Photo: Boo Jonsson
In Oslo the Nobel Peace Prize is presented by the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the presence of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Norway, the Government, Storting representatives and an invited audience. Several hundred seats are reserved for persons with special reasons for wishing to attend the ceremony. Later the same day, the Norwegian Nobel Committee hosts a banquet in honour of the Laureate, with specially invited guests.
Oslo City HallInside Oslo City Hall.
Since the Nobel Prize is regarded by far as the most prestigious prize in the world, the Award Ceremonies as well as the Banquets in Stockholm and Oslo on 10 December have been transformed from local Swedish and Norwegian arrangements into major international events that receive worldwide coverage by the print media, radio and television.
According to the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, given by the King in Council on June 29, 1900, "the prize-awarding bodies shall present to each prize-winner an assignment for the amount of the prize, a diploma, and a gold medal bearing the image of the testator and an appropriate inscription."
The medals for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and Literature were modeled by the Swedish sculptor and engraver Erik Lindberg and the Peace medal by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. The medal for The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (established in 1968 in connection with the 300th anniversary of the Sveriges Riksbank), was designed by Gunvor Svensson-Lundqvist.
The front side of the three "Swedish" medals (Physics and Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature) is the same, featuring a portrait of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death in Latin - NAT-MDCCC XXXIII OB-MDCCC XCVI. Alfred Nobel's face on the Peace medal and on the medal for the Economics Prize has different designs. The main inscription on the reverse side of all three "Swedish" Nobel Prize medals is the same: "Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes,"while the images vary according to the symbols of the respective prize-awarding institutions. The Peace medal has the inscription "Pro pace et fraternitate gentium" and the Economics medal has no quotation at all on the reverse.
Up to 1980 the "Swedish" medals, each weighing approximately 200 g and with a diameter of 66 mm, were made of 23-karat gold. Since then they have been made of 18-karat green gold plated with 24-karat gold.
Today the "Swedish" medals are cast by Myntverket - the Swedish Mint - in Eskilstuna and the Peace medal by Den Kongelige Mynt - the Royal Mint - in Kongsberg, Norway.
The Nobel medals have had the same design since 1902. Why not since 1901, when the first Prizes were awarded? In early 1901 the young and talented Swedish sculptor and engraver Erik Lindberg - later Professor Erik Lindberg - had been entrusted with the task of creating the three "Swedish" Nobel medals, while the Norwegian medal - the Peace medal - had been entrusted to the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. The designs of the reverse sides of the "Swedish" Nobel medals were not finalized in time for the first Award Ceremony in 1901. We gather from Erik Lindberg's correspondence with his father Professor Adolf Lindberg that each of the 1901 Laureates received a "temporary" medal - a medal bearing the portrait of Alfred Nobel, cast in a baser metal - as a memento until the "real" medals were finished.
During the years 1901-1902 Erik Lindberg was living in Paris. He was influenced by modern French medal engravers of that period, such as the masters Roty, Chaplain, Tasset and Vernon. The portrait on the front of the Swedish medals was completed in time. It was reduced in October 1901 at Janvier's in Paris and the final punching took place in Stockholm. The reason for the delay was that the symbols on the reverse of the medals had to be approved by each Prize-Awarding institution, which was not without controversy. After lengthy discussions by letter, Erik Lindberg decided to return to Stockholm in November 1901 in order to present his ideas in person. His proposals were then all accepted, and he was finally able to produce the plaster casts for the reverse sides, which were then reduced for the final metal-stamping dies.
As Gustav Vigeland was a sculptor and not a medal engraver, Erik Lindberg was asked to make the dies for the Peace medal. His reductions were based on Vigeland's designs.
Registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation
On all "Swedish" Nobel medals the name of the Laureate is engraved fully visible on a plate on the reverse, whereas the name of the Peace Laureate as well as that of the Winner for the Economics Prize is engraved on the edge of the medal, which is less obvious. For the 1975 Economics Prize winners, the Russian Leonid Kantorovich and the American Tjalling Koopmans, this created problems. Their medals were mixed up in Stockholm, and after the Nobel Week the Prize Winners went back to their respective countries with the wrong medals. As this happened during the Cold War, it took four years of diplomatic efforts to have the medals exchanged to their rightful owners.
On December 10 at the Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, His Majesty the King hands each Laureate a diploma and a medal. The Peace Prize, i.e. diploma and medal, is presented on the same day in Oslo by the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the presence of the King of Norway. The Irish poet William Butler Yeates wrote the following in "The Bounty of Sweden" (The Cuala Press, Dublin, 1925) after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923:
"All is over, and I am able to examine my medal, its charming, decorative, academic design, French in manner, a work of the nineties. It shows a young man listening to a Muse, who stands young and beautiful with a great lyre in her hand, and I think as I examine it, 'I was good-looking once like that young man, but my unpractised verse was full of infirmity, my Muse old as it were; and now I am old and rheumatic, and nothing to look at, but my Muse is young'."
There are many rumors of what happened to the Nobel medals of three Nobel Laureates in Physics during World War II: the medals of the Germans Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925), and of the Dane Niels Bohr (1922). Professor Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen had been a refuge for German Jewish physists since 1933. Max von Laue and James Franck had deposited their medals there to keep them from being confiscated by the German authorities. After the occupation of Denmark in April 1940, the medals were Bohr's first concern, according to the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy (also of Jewish origin and a 1943 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry), who worked at the institute. In Hitler's Germany it was almost a capital offense to send gold out of the country. Since the names of the Laureates were engraved on the medals, their discovery by the invading forces would have had very serious consequences. To quote George de Hevesy (Adventures in Radioisotope Research, Vol. 1, p. 27, Pergamon, New York, 1962), who talks about von Laue's medal: "I suggested that we should bury the medal, but Bohr did not like this idea as the medal might be unearthed. I decided to dissolve it. While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving Laue's and also James Franck's medals. After the war, the gold was recovered and the Nobel Foundation generously presented Laue and Frank with new Nobel medals." de Hevesy wrote to von Laue after the war that the task of dissolving the medals had not been easy, as gold is "exceedingly unreactive and difficult to dissolve." The Nazis occupied Bohr's institute and searched it very carefully but they did not find anything. The medals quietly waited out the war in a solution of aqua regia. de Hevesy did not mention Niels Bohr's own Nobel medal but documents in the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen show that Niels Bohr's Nobel medal, as well as the Nobel medal of the 1920 Danish Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, August Krogh, had already been donated to an auction held on March 12, 1940 for the benefit of the Fund for Finnish Relief (Finlandshjälpen). The medals were bought by an anonymous buyer and donated to the Danish Historical Museum in Fredriksborg, where they are still kept. Regarding the Nobel medals of von Laue and Franck, the Niels Bohr Archive has a letter from Niels Bohr dated January 24, 1950, about the delivery of gold to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm relating to these two medals. The proceedings of the Nobel Foundation on February 28, 1952, mention that Professor Franck received his recoined medal at a ceremony at the University of Chicago on January 31, 1952.
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Chateau Lalinde : The perfect venue for your event
