Nobel Mania

Abstract

The night of October 12–13, 1998, was a little different than the same night the year before. Thomas, my husband, came back to bed already at 1am, whispering “At least they will celebrate at ITP tomorrow. All attendants of the Quantum Hall program will celebrate the Physics Prize”. I responded “you are early” and he admitted that he could not force himself to stay up the additional 3 hours and wait for the announcement of the Chemistry Prize, as he had done the previous year. He was just too tired. We are Swedes and the Nobel Prize events have been an integral part of our lives since we were small children. But what we in Sweden could follow by TV and radio during day time had to be checked out on the internet during the night, now that we lived in Santa Barbara, 9 time-zones away. So it came to be, that the most important Chemistry Prize in our lives was unnoticed by us until 8am when my mother, Marianne, forced by my father Ingemar (who was tired of all speculations), finally phoned us and asked if it was really my Professor that had been awarded the Chemistry Prize.