Nobel Prize

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen When I was a teenager I learned to play the trumpet. Music became my passion. Then, when I was in college at Amherst, my father asked me a favor: to take one course in economics. I loved it – for the challenge of its…

William B. Shockley’s speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1956 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen: When I accepted yesterday the honor of responding for the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics, I did not fully realize that I was undertaking one of the most difficult of all speaking…

Telegram from Rabindranath Tagore, read by Mr. Clive, British Chargé d’Affaires, at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1913 I beg to convey to the Swedish Academy my grateful appreciation of the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother. …

Gerhart Hauptmann’s speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1912 (in German) Als Empfänger des diesjährigen litterarischen Nobelpreises danke ich Ihnen für die warmen und freundlichen Worte, die auch an mich gerichtet worden sind. Sie dürfen überzeugt sein, dass ich und mit mir meine Nation die Ehre völlig verstehen und schätzen, die mir…

As the Laureate was unable to be present at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1911, the speech was given by Mr. Charles C.M.A. Wauters, Minister of Belgium (Translation) The absence of my illustrious countryman, Mr. Maurice Maeterlinck, whom a serious illness retains at home, has – as Count Mömer has already…

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1905 (Translation) Nations are represented by their poets and their writers in the open competition for the Nobel Prize. Consequently the award of the Prize by the glorifies not only the author but the people whose son he is, and it bears…

Norwegian Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1903 (in Norwegian) »Jeg tror, at den præmie, som er tildelt mig i dag, af den store almenhed vil opfattes som gave fra folk til folk. Og da vil jeg få lægge til, at efter den lange kamp jeg har været…

English Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1903 (Translation) I believe that the Prize I have received today will be regarded by the public as a gift from one nation to another. After the long struggle in which I have taken part to gain for Norway an equal…

Martin Rodbell’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1994 Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Life, like the first blooming, emerges tantalizing to the curious: Why, How, When, Where; Interlocked questions arising from the mysterious encompassing matters quite serious. What, for example, is signal transduction? Haven’t you heard, the computer chips proclaim, Surely…

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. My co-winners, Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides, and I wish to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation for this very great honor. We each feel privileged and humbled to be named the winners of the 2010 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in…