Luis Leloir
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.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
