Nobel 2014 8: Canapes, Sir?

Night 2: The Nobel Foundation Reception – Tuesday December 9, 2014

The reception as hosted by the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at the Nordiska Museet, the Swedish Museum of Cultural History.  This was a two hour long stand-up reception with champagne and some simple finger food available.  Other than a receiving line at the entry where four members of the Academy waited to welcome all attendees with a handshake there was no structure to this.  We spent some time talking to Harald Hess, who was a guest of Chemistry winner Eric Betzig and was someone who quite clearly could have been named a 4th winner but got squeezed out by the maximum limit of three winners per discipline. 

Around this time Microsoft was demoing some photo/facial recognition software that allowed you to upload a photo and it would tell you the sex and age of each person in the photo.  When I did this the results were pretty good - except that it said Weo was 20 years older than he really is....and it said the statue was a 56-year old male!
Here’s a photo of Weo signing copies of the Chemistry poster at the Nordic Museum.  I really like how this shows Weo surrounded by young people.  It captures the fact that – despite being a total gearhead – Weo is first and foremost a teacher.  (On the other hand, I’ve seen him play Pictionary at New Year’s.  He’s brilliant, but there’s a limit to his brilliance.)  Throughout this whole event people would come up to the various Laureates and, essentially, want to bask in the reflected glory.  Handshake, autograph, photo – didn’t matter, as long as they got something.


Sharon and Weo’s time was heavily scheduled.  Following tonight’s reception they were theoretically scheduled to attend a dinner hosted by the Royal Academy of Science – but they instead decided that this night was their only opportunity to enjoy dinner with their guests.  As such, they had very graciously scheduled a dinner for 20 people at a restaurant just a very short walk from the museum – looking at Google Maps 5 year later, I think it was at Wardshuset Ulla Winbladh – but not positive.  We all ended up leaving the reception at 730P (rather than at the 8P official ending) and headed over to eat.  We were given a small room perfectly sized to hold our two 10-person tables, and had a lovely meal among friends and family.  For me, personally, this meal was the highlight of the trip.  Things like the concert, awards, and banquet are fun and exciting because of their novelty, but the chance to enjoy a quiet night with friends and family trumps all.

Dinner was delicious, although at the time of this writing (5 years after the even) none of us can recall the full menu details.  We do remember that the main dish was Arctic Char served with the most AMAZING hollandaise I’ve ever had.  It had an almost foamy CRUNCH to it that was incredible.  A neighboring restaurant serves a hollandaise that has trout roe in it, so perhaps what we were served had some similar secret add-in?

When we finished dinner the sidewalks had turned a bit icy so the original plan to walk back to the hotel (about 20 minutes away) was abandoned and we instead ordered up several cabs for the quick trip back.

What happens next?  Tune into the next episode by selecting another page from the "2014 Nobel" menu, above.  These instructions cheerfully supplied as a public service for those who haven't won a Nobel Prize.

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