SIGNIFICANCE OF 10TH DEC - THE PRESENTATION OF NOBEL AWARDS

Dear (s)

The Guests are required to come in dark suit for gentlemen and short or long dress for ladies. This is a strictly formal affair and gentlemen are required to wear white tie and tails, while ladies should be clad in evening gown and here is the menu for the banquet :

·        “”Lobster consommé with shellfish tartare, lobster and Kalix bleak roe

·        Truffle-stuffed quail with parsley root, Brussels sprouts and port wine gravy

·        Lemon and fresh cheese mousse with sea-buckthorn sorbet””.

This is an event which many would give a fortune to attend. Alas, only 1,300 guests can be seated at the Blue Hall of the City Hall of Stockholm where the Banquet has been held since 1934. The occasion is a very grand one conducted every year on Dec 10 and Stockholm and Oslo and here is a signature of the man who is remembered.

In early December, the Nobel Laureates and the Laureates in Economic Sciences arrive in Stockholm, Sweden, to present their Nobel Lectures and to prepare for the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, traditionally held on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. On the same day, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates deliver their Nobel Lectures during the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony at the Oslo City Hall in Norway. It is another news that US President Barack Obama in his acceptance speech of Nobel Peace Prize, uncomfortably acknowledged his role as a leader at war insisting that conflict can morally be justified.

The Nobel Laureates take center stage in Stockholm on 10 December when they receive the Nobel Prize Medal, Nobel Prize Diploma and document confirming the Nobel Prize amount and yesterday they were handed the coveted awards by Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal event in Stockholm’s Concert Hall.

the Swedish King

It was indeed a moment to cherish as the Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, one of the three winners of this year’s Nobel in Chemistry, on Thursday received the prize at a gala ceremony along with other recipients. The other Nobel laureates in literature, economics, physics and medicine also received their prizes A record five women were awarded the Nobel this year.

Born in 1952 at Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, Dr. Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, shared the Nobel with Thomas A Steitz (U.S.) and Ada E. Yonath (Israel) for their “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” They “showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at atomic level,” the Nobel committee said in its citation. All the three used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome. Dr. Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University and Ph.D. in Physics (1976) from Ohio University, U.S. He moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, and then conducted research with Dr. Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist.

To connect the major armament manufacturer Alfred Berhard Nobel died on 10th Dec 1896. He held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. In his will, he used his enormous fortune to institute Nobel prizes and it is the dress code and menu of nobel banquet that appeared at the start

With regards – S Sampathkumar.