Stockholm:

Nobel laureates gathered in the Swedish capital Stockholm on Saturday for the first all-in-person award ceremony complete with a formal banquet since the Covid-19 pandemic curtailed events for the past two years.

The ceremony starts at 1500 GMT and features glamorous formal wear, with men in white tie and tails and women in flowing dresses and elegant hairstyles. Ceremonies in 2020 and 2021 were reduced and there was no banquet.

Many laureates from 2020 and 2021 will attend this year as well as 2022 winners – for example last year there was a ceremony but no laureates attended as they received their medals in their home countries.

During this week, the awardees have participated in activities ranging from panel discussions to news conferences, finding time to visit schools and give talks and participate in a light show.

“Given the challenges the world is facing, it feels particularly important to highlight Alfred Nobel’s idea of ​​the international community,” says Vidar Helgesen, executive director of the Nobel Foundation.

Five of the six Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm each year after a nomination process that is kept secret for the next 50 years. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo where separate celebrations are held.

Dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel left about 31 million kroner — about 1.8 billion kroner ($174.2 million) in today’s money, according to the Foundation — to fund prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace that have been awarded annually since 1901.

Among the 2022 laureates is a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, who won the Nobel Prize in economics along with economists Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for research on how propping up failing banks can avert an even deeper economic crisis.

The economic award is a later addition to the original lineup, instituted by the Swedish central bank.

After the ceremony, there is a banquet in the town hall, where Sweden’s royal family, government officials and dignitaries and business leaders from different countries participate.

Swedish political party leaders are always invited to the banquet. Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which became the country’s second largest party in the September election, was left off the guest list, however, and his party was judged not to be in line with the principles of the awards.

The Nobel Foundation has also rejected the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Imprisoned Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski, the Russian rights group Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)