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September 14, 2005
Nobel laureates and officials to discuss the future of the Nobel Prize
Stanford University will host a special forum on the future of the Nobel Prize at the Peter Wallenberg Learning Theater in Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Building 160, on Monday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. until noon.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature a panel of Nobel laureates and officials who will discuss how science has evolved since the first Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine were awarded in 1901. At that time, the lines separating these three disciplines were clear and distinct. But today, interdisciplinarity is all the rage, as physicists, chemists, biomedical researchers and engineers join forces to create new areas of research that were unthinkable a century ago.
Should Nobel officials continue to hand out prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, peace and literature, or should these categories be redefined in light of the sweeping changes in 21st-century academia? That is the focus of the panel discussion, which will begin after welcoming remarks by Stanford Provost John Etchemendy. The panel will be moderated by Arthur Bienenstock, vice provost and dean of research and graduate policy at Stanford, and will include the following participants:
Paul Berg, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research, Emeritus, at Stanford and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980 Arvid Carlsson, professor of pharmacology, emeritus, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 Svante Lindqvist, director of the Nobel Museum in Stockholm Geir Lundestad, director of the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Institute, which administers the annual peace prize Michael Sohlman, executive director of the Nobel Foundation in StockholmThe event is being held at Stanford in recognition of the university's 16 living Nobel laureates. The 2006 prizes will be announced in the first two weeks of October. Nobel Day at Stanford is part of the Nobel Museum's traveling exhibition, "The Nobel Prize: 100 Years of Creativity," which is on display at the San Francisco Exploratorium through Oct. 2.
For directions to Wallenberg Hall, visit http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/location.html. To register for the event, call Elizabeth Ocken in the Stanford President's Office at (650) 724-1936 or e-mail her at ocken@stanford.edu.
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