This year no fewer than 14 Nobel Laureates arrive in Stockholm for the Nobel Week. The laureates began their stay today with a visit to Nobel Prize Museum in the Old Town, where they each signed a chair at the museum’s restaurant and donated a specially selected artefact to the museum’s collections.
Physics Laureate Didier Queloz gave a key to the museum.
“The key has been used for many years to enter the telescope at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence”, he said.
Esther Duflo, Laureate in Economic Sciences, handed over schoolbooks for children that are used in a project in India that aims to improve learning outcomes. Literature Laureate Olga Tokarczuk donated her diary from last year.
“She told me she feels a bit like a time traveller since she will receive the prize for last year”, says Margrit Wettstein, Curator and Collection Manager at Nobel Prize Museum that received the artefact.
Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, Medicine Laureate, donated an original scientific manuscript from 1913 written by Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald, a pioneering female physiologist. It was the first study to show that haemoglobin in the body increases as oxygen levels fall (for example at high altitudes) – a study that was important to Sir Peter’s research and Nobel Prize.
“The artefacts that we receive awaken great curiosity and give our museum visitors an opportunity to learn more about the discoveries and works that the Laureates are awarded the Nobel Prize for. The Laureates’ stories about the artefacts also bring us closer to the person behind a prize,” says Erika Lanner, Director of Nobel Prize Museum.