Nobel laureates with MIT ties feted in Sweden
For the primary time because the begin of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nobel Prizes have been awarded in a grand in-person ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. Amongst these honored on Saturday have been quite a lot of laureates with ties to MIT — together with this yr’s winners in addition to winners from 2020 and 2021, who weren’t in a position to expertise the standard Nobel celebration attributable to Covid-19 precautions.
Per custom, new winners acquired their medals from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. They embody Ben Bernanke PhD ’79, an economist who was awarded a share of the 2022 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel; in addition to chemists Okay. Barry Sharpless, a former MIT professor, and Carolyn Bertozzi, daughter of Professor Emeritus William Bertozzi and the primary lady to win the Lemelson-MIT Prize. Each Sharpless and Bertozzi won a share of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, “for the event of click on chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”
Earlier honorees acquired their Nobel Prizes in smaller ceremonies in 2020 or 2021 and have been invited to Sweden to take part on this yr’s festivities.
From MIT, these included MIT professor of economics Joshua Angrist, who shared the 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Financial Sciences in reminiscence of Alfred Nobel; physiologist David Julius ’77, who gained a share the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Drugs; and astrophysicist Andrea Ghez ’87, who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Honorees and their invited visitors took half in quite a lot of actions in Stockholm throughout this yr’s Nobel Week, which started with an official banquet and a tour of Nobel Week Lights across the metropolis. Press conferences, speeches, and a go to to the Nobel Prize Museum adopted, together with a standard signing of chairs by the laureates of 2022, 2021, and 2020. The celebrations culminated with the awarding of this yr’s prizes on Saturday, the anniversary of the loss of life of Alfred Nobel.
100 MIT affiliates — together with school, employees, alumni, and others — have gained Nobel Prizes, in accordance with MIT Institutional Analysis.