Nobel Prize

This biography is intended to talk about how my early life contributed to my development as a scholar. This is necessarily speculative, since I have no evidence of what would have happened if my early life had been different. However, my impression is that my development as a scholar built on using my brain on…

I was born in Chicago in 1953. My maternal grandparents were Catholic. My grandmother, Ethel Elizabeth Houlehan Gunkel, was of Irish descent. She was a strong woman who lived to 100 and was lots of fun. My grandfather, Frederick Peter Gunkel, was of Austrian and German descent. He was the executive hog buyer for Oscar…

“Russia uses information like a weapon of mass destruction” has been fighting for human rights and democracy in Ukraine since 2007. Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the organisation, is spearheading their work documenting Russian war crimes against Ukraine, and pushing back against the deluge of disinformation being used to influence and confuse. Can the tidal wave…

Interview with the 2022 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine Svante Pääbo on 6 December 2022 during the Nobel Week in Stockholm, Sweden. Where does your passion for science come from? Svante Pääbo: I really don’t know where my passion from science comes from. I think my initial passion was much more for ancient history…

The Early Years: Birth to High School I was born in a small suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark, on 16th January 1954. I was the first of three children born to my parents, Hanne and Thorkil Meldal. My mother was from the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and was the daughter of Niels…

Iwas born December 13, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia, but spent my childhood and teenage years in Dillon, South Carolina. Dillon, a town of about 6,000 people, lies just west of the Little Pee Dee River, in the northeastern part of the state. When I lived there, the area was mostly dependent on agriculture – cotton…

Nobel Prize Conversations “If you’re interested in something, you’d be amazed what interest can do” Meet the only living individual that has been awarded two Nobel Prizes in an intimate conversation. In October 2022 Barry Sharpless made history when he was awarded his second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In this podcast episode we speak to…

Nobel Prize Conversations “You have to reinvent yourself every couple of years. It’s absolutely important. It’s necessary for me to make my life interesting. Life is too short.” Meet physicist Anton Zeilinger in a podcast episode where he speaks about his endless curiosity, the randomness and weirdness connected to quantum mechanics and why the number…

Nobel Prize Conversations “I am fundamentally a professor. I love teaching and explaining difficult things” Ever wondered how to boil an egg to perfection? In this podcast conversation, physicist Alain Aspect shares his best advice on how to cook the perfect egg. Together with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, he also speaks about his love…

13 December 2025 Norwegian Nobel Committee expresses relief at the release of Ales Bialiatski The Norwegian Nobel Committee expresses its profound relief and heartfelt joy at the release of Ales Bialiatski, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate 2022, from prison in Belarus. His freedom is a deeply welcome and long-awaited moment. He had been serving a…