Nobel Prize

French Roger Martin du Gard’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1937 Monseigneur, Mesdames, Messieurs, La présence de tant de personnalités éminentes, réunies sous le patronage de Son Altesse le Prince Royal, augmente encore l’émotion que j’éprouve de me trouver ici, et d’entendre les paroles élogieuses qui viennent…

As the Laureate was unable to be present at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1936, the speech was read by James E. Brown, Jr., American Chargé d’Affaires It is an extraordinary privilege that has come to me to take before this gathering of eminent persons the place of my…

Ivan Bunin’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1933 (Translation) On November ninth, very far from here in a poor country house in an old Provencal town, I received the telephone call that informed me of the choice of the . I would not be honest if I told you,…

Sigrid Undset’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1928 (Translation) The preceding speakers have far better expressed our gratitude for the Prizes awarded to us than I could have done, and I subscribe to their words. I write more readily than I speak and I am especially reluctant to talk…

William Butler Yeats’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1923 I have been all my working life indebted to the Scandinavian nation. When I was a very young man, I spent several years writing in collaboration with a friend the first interpretation of the philosophy of the English poet Blake.…

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…