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

 

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1970