Luis Leloir

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1970

Banquet Speech

Luis Leloir's speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1970

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The honour which I have received exceeds - by far - my most optimistic expectation.

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is such that one is suddenly promoted to a new status. In this new status I feel rather uneasy on considering that my name will join the list of the giants of chemistry such as van 't Hoff, Fischer, Arrhenius, Ramsay, von Baeyer - to name only a few. I also feel uneasy when I think of contemporary chemists that have done great contributions and also when I think on my collaborators who carried out a great part of the work.

In spite of this I am profoundly grateful for having received from Your Majesty this great honour and to the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of the Royal Academy of Sciences for having selected me.

Finally, I might paraphrase Churchill and say: never have I received so much for so little.

From Les Prix Nobel en 1970, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1971