Nobel laureates with MIT bands party in Sweden | MIT News
For the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nobel Prizes were awarded at a grand in-person ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. Among those honored Saturday were a number of laureates with ties to MIT — including this year’s winner as well as winners from 2020 and 2021, who were unable to experience the traditional Nobel celebration due to Covid-19 precautions.
According to tradition, new winners received their medals from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. They include Ben Bernanke PhD ’79, an economist who was awarded part of the Swedish Riksbank’s prize in economic science 2022 in memory of Alfred Nobel; as well as chemists K. Barry Sharpless, a former MIT professor, and Carolyn Bertozzi, daughter of Professor Emeritus William Bertozzi and the first woman to win the Lemelson-MIT Prize. Both Sharpless and Bertozzi won a share of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry“for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”
Previous honorees received their Nobel Prizes in smaller ceremonies in 2020 or 2021 and were invited to Sweden to participate in this year’s festivities.
From MIT, they included the MIT Professor of Economics Joshua Angrist, who shared the Swedish Riksbank’s prize in economic science 2021 in memory of Alfred Nobel; physiologist David Julius ’77, who won a share of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; and astrophysicist Andrea Ghez ’87who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Honorees and their invited guests participated in a series of activities in Stockholm during this year’s Nobel Week, which began with an official banquet and a Nobel Week Lights tour around the city. Press conferences, speeches and a visit to the Nobel Prize Museum followed, including a traditional signing of chairs by the 2022, 2021 and 2020 laureates. The celebration culminated with the presentation of this year’s prizes on Saturday, the anniversary of the death. by Alfred Nobel.
100 MIT affiliates — including faculty, staff, alumni and others — have won Nobel Prizes, according to MIT Institutional Research.