Nobel Prize

Leland H. Hartwell’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 2001 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honoured Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, The goal of science, as we all know, is to discover simplicity in the midst of complexity. Yet when Paul Nurse, Tim Hunt and I and our students and colleagues began studying how cells…

Theodore W. Schultz’ speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1979 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Royal Academy of Sciences expressed a deep concern about the economic problems and the welfare of poor people throughout the world in awarding the Nobel Prize in Economics this year. It is a noble concern…

Sir Arthur Lewis’ speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1979 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, The privilege of accepting the greetings of the students has been accorded to me, and I seize it gladly. On behalf of this year’s laureates I say – Welcome fellow students, the path is hard, and…

Herbert A. Simon’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1978 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, May I express my deep gratitude for the honor bestowed on me, and through me, on the colleagues with whom I have collaborated in studying economic behavior and the human mind. Ten years ago, economics was…

James E. Meade’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1977 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, What an exciting subject is economics and what an impossible combination of qualities does it not demand for its practice: Scientific observation of the facts of commercial life; commonsensical inference, from personal introspection, daily experience and…

Milton Friedman’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1976 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great honour and privilege for me to be here tonight, sharing in the reflected glory from my distinguished colleagues, not only the six fellow members of the class of 1976, but the many more…

Tjalling C. Koopmans’ speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1975 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Also on behalf of my colleague and co-recipient of the 1975 award for economics, I wish to thank the Royal Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Foundation, and all our other institutional and personal hosts for the…

Friedrich August von Hayek’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Now that the Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science has been created, one can only be profoundly grateful for having been selected as one of its joint recipients, and the economists certainly have every reason…

John R. Hicks’ speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1972 Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, Economics comes in at the end; that (I am sure) is where we belong. Our science colleagues find permanent truths; economists, who deal with the daily actions of men and the consequences of these actions, can…

Simon Kuznets’ speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1971 Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen, When, over fifty years ago, I first became interested in economics – as a discipline that provided the key to social structure and social problems – it never crossed my mind that one day I…