Nobel Prize Award Ceremony 2021
The prizes to Klaus Hasselmann and Benjamin List will be awarded this year at the Harnack House / Livestream on 7 December from 6 p.m.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, part of this year's Nobel Prize ceremony will take place on 7 December in Berlin's Harnack House, the conference venue of the Max Planck Society. Customarily, the awards ceremony takes place on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel – at Stockholm Concert Hall, where each Laureate receives their medals and diplomas from the hands of the King of Sweden, and Nobel Prize winners are honoured during a week of scientific and cultural activities, including concerts, festive receptions and a banquet.
This year, the Nobel Prizes awarded in a hybrid format in pandemic-curtailed local ceremonies. The actual award ceremony takes place in the laureates' home countries. They include Benjamin List from the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, who together with David W.C. MacMillan receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis". Half of the Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and Syukuro Manabe "for the physical modelling of the Earth's climate, the quantification of variations and the reliable prediction of global warming."
A small exclusive circle of prominent guests from science and politics has been invited to the Harnack House. The historic Goethe Hall of the house provides the festive setting for the ceremony, at which His Excellency Ambassador Per Thöresson will present the medals on behalf of the King of Sweden. Founded in 1929, the Harnack House has always been a meeting place for Nobel Prize winners. Even before WWII, researchers from all over the world came together here at the invitation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the predecessor organization of the Max Planck Society - among them Albert Einstein and Otto Hahn, but also the first Indian Nobel laureate in literature, Rabindranath Tagore.
Already in the afternoon at 2 p.m. there will be a Nobel Symposium with the two Nobel Laureates at the Swedish Embassy in Berlin, moderated by Ranga Yogeshwar. This event will also be shown in a livestream on YouTube.
