The Prize (105 page)

Denise addressed Jacobsson. ‘Why did the Royal Academy of Science neglect him?’

‘He was too far ahead of his time, and no one here understood his abstractions,’ Jacobsson said simply. ‘As I told Mr. Craig yesterday, our judges are only too human. They make mistakes. Usually, though, they are right.’

‘Yes, usually they are right,’ said Denise. ‘Have any of your chemistry judges won the Nobel Prize?’

‘Professor The Svedberg was elected in 1926, most deservedly, and he has balloted on many awards. A remarkable man, Svedberg, a one-man faculty, library, student body, all condensed in a single brain. He spoke seven languages, read poetry in Latin, learned Spanish in two months before taking a trip to South America. We have had our share of geniuses. The annual balloting is in good hands.’

‘How do your judges determine if a certain candidate should be honoured in chemistry or physics?’ inquired Claude. ‘To my mind, there is often considerable overlapping.’

‘You have touched upon one of our major problems,’ agreed Jacobsson. ‘When such a decision has to be made, the chemistry and physics committees of the Academy of Science exchange their views and make an arbitrary judgment. I would guess that such a decision might have been made in 1944, when Dr. Otto Hahn was a candidate for discovering nuclear fission, which affected physicists everywhere and led to the atom bomb. But Hahn’s experiments were actually in chemistry, and so he received the chemistry award. I suspect that our chemistry judges are happiest when there is no overlapping, and they can vote for candidates whose findings are unquestionably in the chemical realm. Many such clear-cut decisions come to mind at once—Sir William Ramsay’s discovery of helium, Henri Moissan’s isolation of fluorine and adoption of the electric furnace and his production of artificial diamonds. Actually, in the case of Moissan, a majority of the Academy had favoured the Russian, Dmitri Mendeleev, for inventing the periodic system—but one minority judge impressed the others with Moissan’s versatility, and those artificial diamonds carried the day. Other clear-cut decisions? Richard Willst
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tter’s work, and later Hans Fischer’s, on chlorophyll, and, in 1960, Willard F. Libby’s atom time clock, which could tell the age of fossils fifty thousand years old, dating even the hair of an Egyptian mummy. Those are the chemistry awards our judges like the most.’

‘And you, Count Jacobsson,’ said Denise, ‘what do you like the most?’

Jacobsson was startled, and then he smiled. ‘I concur with the majority. I am only an innocent bystander.’ He considered this a moment, and recollected his Notes, and then he added, ‘As a matter of fact, the 1957 medical award—which was a case of overlapping and might very well have been the chemistry award, instead—that one gave me a good deal of satisfaction, because it was deserving, and, as one advanced in years, I had profited by it. I am sure you know of Dr. Daniel Bovet’s discoveries. He was a Swiss who became an Italian citizen. For a while, I believe, he worked at your Institute in Paris.’

Denise nodded. ‘Yes, shortly before our time.’

‘Bovet made three thousand experiments in four years. As a result, he produced the sulphurs, and the great anti-allergy drugs—anti-histamines, and synthetic curare to be used as a muscle relaxant in surgery, and so on. In your Paris, Bovet fell in love with the daughter of a former Premier of Italy—her name was Filomena Nitti—and he told the press, “I proposed immediately. It was a lightning chemical reaction.” After that, they worked together like the Curies, and Joliot-Curies, and yourselves. I think it is wonderful, a man and wife, to have so major a common interest.’

Claude squirmed, and Denise glared at him, and the last was not lost on Count Jacobsson. Claude fished for his silver cigarette case, and Jacobsson, while mystified, sensed the ferment in the room.

Instinctively, Jacobsson wanted this couple to be happier, to be drawn closer together. He wanted to inform them of how happy Marie Curie, the first woman to win the prize, had been to share it with her husband, and how sad she had been, when she arrived in Stockholm for her second prize, to come without him, for Pierre Curie had been killed in an accident in 1906. Jacobsson wanted to tell them how well another husband-wife team, Drs. Gerty and Carl Cori, who had won the medical prize for isolating enzymes, had got on together and were a family. But somehow, Jacobsson felt that this might not be the time for such examples. Yet there was his job and the dignity of the awards, and he must think of something to give the Marceaus subtle warning. Then he thought of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who had shared the $41,000 prize in 1935, and with them he thought that he might make his point.

‘Indeed, you are in a select circle,’ Jacobsson told the Marceaus. ‘You are only the fourth husband-and-wife pair in our history to win the prize. We are sentimental about such awards, and the winners, with one exception, have made us proud.’

‘One exception?’ said Denise carefully.

‘I am thinking of your countrymen, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who won the chemistry award for their discoveries in radioactive elements.’

‘What of them?’ asked Denise.

‘They earned the award for artificial radium, and they received it here in Stockholm, and we would give it to them again. But their subsequent history, after the prize, was—in some respects—unfortunate.’

‘They were a devoted couple,’ said Denise sharply, with an eye on her husband.

‘Oh, yes, yes, nothing like that,’ said Jacobsson hastily. ‘Indeed, they were heroes of the Second World War. Frédéric Joliot-Curie stole the world’s greatest supply of heavy water—then important in atomic research—from under the noses of the Nazis in Norway. He got it safely to England. And in France, despite the Gestapo, he organized eighteen underground laboratories to make incendiary bottles for the maquis. I have no doubt you know all that.’

‘Yes, we do,’ said Denise.

‘It was their activity after the war that most Swedes deplored,’ said Jacobsson. ‘Frédéric joined the French Communist Party. And Irène Joliot-Curie told an American visitor that the United States was uncivilized, and that the working-men should overthrow the government. I remember more that she said, for I have recorded all in my Notes. She told the American, “You are deliberately fomenting war. You are imperialists, and you want war. You will attack the U.S.S.R., but it will conquer you through the power of its idea.” I tell you, this caused much headshaking in the Swedish Academy of Science.’

‘Unfortunate,’ said Claude. ‘However, surely you judge by the scientific achievement of your laureates, not by their personal activities.’

‘True,’ said Jacobsson. And then, he added slowly, ‘Still, our laureates are so much looked up to, so widely respected, that when they commit scandals, we are unhappy—extremely unhappy.’

The shaft, motivated by instinct and not information, hit its targets, Jacobsson was certain. For Denise regarded her husband coldly, and Claude avoided her gaze and lifted his heavy-set frame from the sofa.

‘I am eager to see the room where the chemistry awards are voted,’ announced Claude.

Jacobsson rose. ‘I had better explain that the room you will see is not exactly where the balloting takes place. In this room, the Committee for Chemistry often holds the preliminary meetings that lead to the recommendation of the ultimate winner. The actual final balloting, ever since 1913, takes place in the session hall of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science building, located at Frescati just beyond central Stockholm.’

Now the three of them walked through the Executive Director’s office into the corridor, and then into what Jacobsson called the conference room of the Nobel Foundation.

‘Here,’ said Jacobsson, as they stood inside the door, ‘is where the Nobel committee-men determined upon the two of you as the favourites for the prize in chemistry, and where the physics branch weeded Professor Stratman and several others out as the foremost candidates for the prize in physics.’

The Marceaus surveyed the green room. It had none of the shine of a tourist showcase and none of the petrified appearance of archives. It conveyed the impression of a room in which living men did living work and did it frequently. Most of the conference room was filled by the table, its surface overlaid with leather, worn and beaten, and surrounded by ten chairs covered with oxhide. Directly across, overlooking the table, hung a large oilpainting of Alfred Nobel, seated, the work executed posthumously in 1915.

Jacobsson led the Marceaus around the room anti-clockwise. To the right, a long marble ledge ran along the wall, and on top of it were boxed red-bound albums. Jacobsson removed one album. ‘In each album, we keep photographs of our laureates, autographed whenever possible. The day after the final Ceremony, you will be asked to come here to receive your cheque and to sign your photographs.’ He opened the album. ‘Here you see signed photographs of two fellow chemistry winners. This is Professor Richard Kuhn, of the University of Heidelberg, who was voted the 1938 prize for his work in vitamins. And on this page is Professor Adolph Butenandt, of the University of Berlin, who shared the 1939 prize for his work on sex hormones. As you know, Hitler would not allow his subjects to accept the Nobel Prize. Both Kuhn and Butenandt were forced to refuse it. However, in 1948, after the war and Hitler’s death, these two wrote to thank us for the honour which they had wanted but not been permitted to accept. We gave them their gold medals and diplomas, but could no longer give them the prize money. By regulation, it had been held one year, and then returned to the main fund. Too bad, too bad.’

Jacobsson restored the album to its case, then indicated a lively portrait of a woman, hanging above the ledge.

‘Alfred Nobel’s mother painted by Anders Zorn,’ he said. ‘Nobel had tremendous affection for her. Even when he was travelling, he tried to come back to Stockholm annually for her birthday. She died six years before he did.’

They moved on to the far wall of the room. Jacobsson identified the paintings on either side of the oil of Nobel himself. ‘This is Bertha von Suttner, the most important woman in Nobel’s life besides his mother. She had been a titled governess in Austria, and was fired, when she read an advertisement in a Vienna newspaper—“Elderly, cultured gentleman, very wealthy, resident of Paris, seeks equally mature lady, linguist, as secretary and supervisor of household.” She answered the advertisement, and Nobel was the elderly, cultured gentleman, very wealthy. She became his secretary, and often his adviser. Later, she left him to marry a young baron and become one of the world’s foremost pacifists. It is possible that she influenced Nobel to create the Peace Prize. At any rate, we feel that she belongs beside him on this wall. The painting on the other side is of Ragnar Sohlman, an executive director of this Foundation, who died in 1948. He had been a personal friend of Nobel’s and one of the executors of the famous will.’

Jacobsson pointed out the three bronze busts in the room. ‘This one is of Nobel. We move it to Concert Hall on the tenth for the Ceremony, and then bring it back here. That one is Nobel’s father, and the other, one of his brothers. Now, perhaps, you are curious about what took place in the session hall the afternoon your names were presented?’

‘I am most curious,’ Denise admitted.

‘The four leading chemistry candidates were decided upon earlier in this room,’ said Jacobsson. ‘You yourselves were one. Two Americans, as another team. A Dane. And a candidate from Israel. Of the other candidates, one was considered for his pioneer work in the creation of life, of a living cell. But it was felt that his findings were not yet conclusive. Another had accomplished much in the dissolving of blood clots. Again, the work was considered in its primitive stage. The third, our American candidates, had made progress in new drugs for mental unbalance. In one case, I will admit, a certain prejudice was held against the candidate. He was wealthy and his work commercial, and certain judges were against him for no other reasons. You will understand the sensitivity of the judges when I explain that, although Nobel had once stated that he wanted to reward dreamers who found it hard to get on in life, in contradiction to this, the chemistry committee had given the 1931, award to Karl Bosch head of the I. G. Farben cartel, and to Friedrich Bergius, also of Farben, for making coal into oil. The committee was soundly criticized for its choice. At any rate, the current judges decided that both of you were dreamers, qualified in every way, and your discovery of sperm vitrification thoroughly proved. The debate lasted less than two hours. You were elected laureates by a vote of better than two to one.’