The 'fathers' of covid vaccines star at the Nobel Prize ceremony

At the beginning of 2020, the covid pandemic broke out. This Sunday, almost four years later, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, the scientists who laid the foundations for the rapid development of vaccines based on messenger RNA that saved millions of lives, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Both researchers, along with the rest of the winners, took the medal that accredits them as new Nobel Prize winners from the hands of King Carl Gustav of Sweden, in a ceremony held this Sunday at the Stockholm Concert Hall, the same day that the death is commemorated. by Alfred Nobel.

During the ceremony, the winners do not speak and when receiving the award they only bow three times: to the monarch, to the members of the academies and to the public, at which time the Hungarian biochemist Karikó and the American immunologist Weissman received the longest applause and closed.

On this occasion, seven men and three women occupied the place of honor.. The fourth was Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned in Iran and who this Sunday began a new hunger strike, for whom the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, which was awarded a few hours earlier in Oslo.

The president of the Nobel Foundation, Astrid Söderbergh, opened the event by remembering the activist against the oppression of women in Iran, imprisoned “along with many other prisoners of conscience”, in the Evin prison in Tehran, and reiterated her message: ” Victory is not easy, but it is certain.”

And of the ten new Nobel Prize winners present in Stockholm, he assured that they testify, “each of them in a unique way”, to the power of science and literature. “They show us that, individually and together, we have within us the ability to change the world.”

The ceremony had begun minutes before, with the attendance of Kings Carl Gustav and Silvia, along with Crown Princess Victoria and her husband, Prince Daniel, as well as some 1,560 guests.

Karikó and Weissman deserved the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries about messenger RNA which, 15 years later, “made it possible to develop vaccines that helped control a devastating pandemic and save millions of lives,” said Gunilla Karlsson, of the Nobel Assembly. when presenting the award.

The pandemic caused citizens' trust in science to increase, as did their awareness and knowledge “about infectious threats”. The basic research carried out by the new Nobel Prize winners “without a doubt contributed to this,” said Karlsson.

In Chemistry, the Frenchman Moungi Bawendi, the American Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov (former Soviet Union) discovered and synthesized quantum dots, which have contributed “decisively” to the field of nanoscience and are already used to improve screens or to mark tissue tumor during surgery.

The Nobel Prize in Physics went to the French Anne L'Huillier and Pierre Agostini and the Hungarian Ferenc Krausz, for their work to generate light pulses lasting attoseconds with lasers and thus investigate the dynamics of electrons within atoms.

L'Huillier is the fifth woman in the history of these awards to win in Physics. Resident in Sweden, where she carries out her university work, the king greeted her at length when presenting her with the medal and diploma.

The American Claudia Goldin is the third woman to achieve it in Economics and the first to do it alone in this category. Her research has “radically changed what we know about women in the labor market and how we understand what we know,” said Kerstin Englo of the Nobel Committee.

The Norwegian playwright and novelist Jon Fosse has received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his ability to “give voice to what cannot be said,” highlighted Anders Olsson, of the Nobel Committee.

The author of Septology uses the simplest words and writes about experiences with which we all identify: separation, death, the vulnerability of love, but he is also – he highlighted – “the master of ambivalence and the unresolved.”. In their world, uncertainty pulses with a secret light.”

A group of several dozen people gathered around the Concert Hall who, with photos and banners, recalled that the Nobel Peace Prize winner is in prison and asked for her release.

Almost next to them, a second group, gathered by the Scientist Rebellion organization, drew attention to climate change and warned that COP28 in Dubai could be “another failure.”