The Nobel prizes are coming out. These Are the Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes. Therefore, this is an appropriate time to bring this up.
Last May, Barb and I visited the Scandinavian countries. One of the places we visited was Stockholm. The Airbnb we stayed at had a few issues, but location was not one of them. We were capable of walking to many interesting places and nearby public transportation enabled quick access to many others.
Barb had a list of places to visit, and we connected with all of them. But just a three-minute walk from our Airbnb I saw this:

What??? We just stumbled upon the Nobel Prize Museum? Wow!
When I was in grade school, I really loved science. I entertained a dim fantasy of someday winning a Nobel Prize.
Barb wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was, but we had the time and visited the next day. She became more enthusiastic as we went through the museum. I was excited and shared bits of history she didn’t know. For example, Alford Nobel earned his money by inventing and manufacturing dynamite. He created the peace prize to compensate. He wanted to balance the war destruction enabled by his invention. We would be watching a video and without first mentioning the person, their accomplishments or difficulties would be described. I would whisper, “That must be Niels Bohr!”, or Marie Curie, or someone else I knew about.
The museum contained a lot of Nobel’s history, family, and friends. And even more exhibits of particularly well-known prize winners. Some of the things I found most interesting, included items from the prize winners that were related to the prize. This included things like the actual equipment used to make a particular discovery. Or a shawl worn while giving a famous speech. I was in awe. This is the actual equipment they used to discover “X”! Or the original notes leading to their discovery. It was awesome!
It was rather dim and since no flash photography was allowed, I didn’t get many good pictures.



Photo by Barb
Nobel in Physics for work on AI? Bizarre. That’s almost as bad as giving the Peace prize to Arafat or Obama.
It used to be that a Nobel in one of the real sciences was a meaningful award, but this suggests that is no longer true even there.
I heard similar thoughts from someone who had talked to a top physicist about it—20 years ago.
Did they give you the formula and exact process? I see they have a display, but it sure be nice to get some meat with those tatos.
Sounds like you’all had a good time!
The recipe for dynamite is well known. I don’t have it memorized, but it’s not a big deal.