These glass plates are replicas of the plates used by Pierre Agostini when he first succeeded in creating extremely short pulses of laser light. The plates were used in a crucial step of the experiment to delay some of the laser light. Both plates are equally thick since the smaller one has been cut from the larger one. Positioning the plates just right, splitting the laser into two parts, and letting each part pass through its own plate delays one laser pulse in relation to the other with very high precision.
Agostini’s used harmonics in the laser light’s wavelengths to create and study laser pulse trains. By combining the pulse trains with a delayed part of the original laser pulse, Agostini and his colleagues were able to study how the harmonics were in phase with each other.
Pierre Agostini donated the delay plates to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
These instruments were used by Anne L’Huillier in her early research on laser harmonics. A laser beam was created using the rod, which consists of glass with a layer of neodymium atoms. The metal parts were used to create a gas stream of noble atoms that the laser beam passed through. This created the laser harmonics. The shiny metal plate is a diffraction grating. The reflecting surface has many microscopic slits that split the light into wavelengths. This allows the study of how the light’s different wavelengths are composed. Laser harmonics allows the creation of laser pulses that are so short that they are measured in attoseconds.
Anne L'Huillier donated the instruments to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
This copy of the periodical Die Waffen nieder! is from Alfred Nobel’s own library. The magazine was published in 1892–1899, and Bertha von Suttner was its editor. The magazine was named after Suttner’s novel from 1889.
I ett brev från 1919 ger Selma Lagerlöf sitt omdöme om en samling dikter som 20-årige Gunnar Lundh skickat till henne.
Selma Lagerlöf var när brevet skrevs en mycket välkänd och älskad författare i dåtidens Sverige. Hon var dessutom Nobelpristagare i litteratur och ledamot i Svenska Akademien. Det var inte ovanligt att människor som gjorde egna litterära försök hörde av sig till henne för att få ta del av hennes uppfattning.
Lagerlöfs svar till Lundh var vänligt och uppmuntrande:
”Med det uttryckliga förbehållet att mitt omdöme om den lilla diktboken inte användes som reklam eller offentliggöres, vill jag gärna säga min mening om den. Det förekommer mig att Ni har en stor förmåga att i den kortfattade form Ni valt fått in ett poetiskt innehåll med en god och litet överraskande udd på slutet, såsom det bör vara i epigrammet. I vad mån ni står på självständig grund vågar jag inte döma om, men gör ni det så bör Ni komma att skänka oss många vackra saker.”
Gunnar Lundh blev aldrig någon känd författare. Däremot blev han en framstående fotograf. Mest känd blev han kanske för de bilder som publicerades i samband med författaren Ivar Lo-Johanssons reportageresor om statarnas liv i Sverige under 1930- och 1940-talen.
Brevet förvärvades av Nobelprismuseet 2024.
William Phillips was given this slide rule in 1963, just before his 15th birthday when he was going to study physics at school. He used it for calculations for his homework and exams. He recalls one time when he had made a mistake in a task even though he understood the question. He had added it up wrong, and told the teacher he had trusted the slide rule but that it couldn't do addition, only multiplication and division. The teacher told him to try to design a slide rule that could do addition. This prompted Phillips to examine how the slide rule worked. It can be used for multiplication since the scale is logarithmic, but with a linear scale it could also be used for addition. He presented his idea to the teacher. It was never implemented in practice, but his teacher was impressed.
When Phillips started at university, he found a more sophisticated slide rule, and he also had access to larger mechanical calculators and eventually an electronic one. When pocket calculators were introduced, this changed the potential entirely.
William Phillips donated the slide rule to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.
When William Phillips was eleven, his parents gave him this stopwatch. He wanted it in order to perform simple experiments, such as measuring the time it took for pendulums and swings to oscillate, and objects to fall to the ground. He also used the stopwatch to time runners.
As a physicist, Phillips later developed methods for cooling atoms with laser beams. This method made it possible to create even more precise atomic clocks. Their uncertainty is one second per 300 million years.
William Phillips donated the stopwatch to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.
This fishing rod for winter fishing belonged to Aleksey Yekimov. Fishing is one of Yekimov's favourite pastimes.
Aleksey Yekimov donated the fishing rod to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.
In this manifesto from October 1915, women from different countries call for immediate peace negotiations in the ongoing First World War. Among the five signatories are two future Nobel Peace Prize laureates: Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch.
The Manifesto originated in the International Women's Congress in The Hague in 1915. The Congress had more than 1,100 participants and led to the formation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom with Jane Addams as its first president. The manifesto describes how, after the congress, delegations visited 14 capitals of belligerent and neutral countries to try to bring about peace negotiations.
"As women, it was possible for us, from belligerent and neutral nations alike, to meet in the midst of war and to carry forward an interchange of question and answer between capitals which were barred to each other."
The manifesto emphasized that the countries that were outside the war also had a responsibility:
"The excruciating burden of responsibility for the hopeless continuance of this war no longer rests on the wills of the belligerent nations alone. It rests also on the will of those neutral governments and people who have been spared its shock but cannot, if they would, absolve themselves from their full share of responsibility for the continuance of war."
The manifesto was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.
A wheat sack and a food ration card show us how the UN World Food Programme helps people who are suffering food shortages due to war, conflicts or other crisis situations. The sack is labelled as wheat harvested in Ukraine in 2020. It symbolises the traditional way of providing aid by distributing food rations. The ration card is a newer way of distributing food to those in need. It serves as a voucher or coupon that can be used to pay for food in a shop or market. This gives the recipients more independence and dignity, while supporting local communities and businesses. The ration cards are usually handed out to women, who are responsible for the children in families that need aid.
The sack and the ration card were donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Cindy McCain when she visited the Museum as the executive director of the WFP in 2024.
This Nansen passport was issued in Germany in 1933 to a woman born in Russia.
The Nansen passports, created according to an idea by Fridtjof Nansen, enabled many refugees in the 1920s and 1930s to travel.
After the First World War, conditions were chaotic in many places in Europe. National borders were redrawn and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. Most of them were Russians who had become stateless and could not obtain passports to travel. Nansen was assigned by the League of Nations to negotiate with the various parties and promoted his idea for special passports to be issued. The Nansen passports were largely recognised internationally.
This Nansen passport was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.
This passport was issued in Latvia in 1923 to a young woman born in Russia.
The Nansen passports, created according to an idea by Fridtjof Nansen, enabled many refugees in the 1920s and 1930s to travel.
After the First World War, conditions were chaotic in many places in Europe. National borders were redrawn and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. Most of them were Russians who had become stateless and could not obtain passports to travel. Nansen was assigned by the League of Nations to negotiate with the various parties and promoted his idea for special passports to be issued. The Nansen passports were largely recognised internationally.
This Nansen passport was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.
The subject of the painting "A Multitude of Separations" by the artist Maryam Safajoo is Narges Mohammadi and her two children, from whom she was separated during her time in prison. It was made after talking to people who are close to Mohammadi. Safajoo cites a letter from Mohammadi, written in prison:
“More than 8 years have passed since I last laid eyes on Kiana and Ali, and it's been a year and a half since their voices graced my ears. When they departed, they were merely 8 years old; now, they stand at the ripe age of 16. The moment I bid farewell to Ali and Kiana felt akin to a personal demise amidst the lush, tree-adorned courtyard of Evin. I meticulously gathered dandelions from the expansive stretch of Evin's garden. Standing barefoot on the July 14 asphalt, my feet scorched while my heart blazed with fervor. I released the dandelions into the sky, their hands, feet, and innocent countenances fading from my sight as my tears flowed like the gentle rain of spring descending upon the earth. If I peer at the prison through the window of my heart, I have become an estranged soul, more foreign than any outsider, to my beloved daughter and son. I've relinquished the prime years of existence, knowing that what's bygone shall never return. Nevertheless, I am unwavering in my belief that a world devoid of freedom, equality, and peace isn't a life worth living or even beholding.”
After Maryam Safajoo had finished the painting, she was informed that Narges Mohammadi had seen a picture of the painting in prison and was very grateful.
The painting was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Maryam Safajoo in 2024.
This stone was very important to José Saramago. Made of volcanic rock, he found it on Lanzarote, where he lived. It had a symbolic meaning to Saramago. He said that up to and including his book Blindness, he was describing people as statues, metaphorically speaking, but then he began to take an interest in the stone, the material that statues are made of.
The stone was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by the José Saramago Foundation and Pilar del Río in 2024.
This collection of keys was in an envelope in Eyvind Johnson’s desk drawer. That was where his family found them after his death, and they kept them ever since. His daughter Maria Ekman writes,
“Nobody had known for ages what they went to – they were simply left, like sediments from previous phases in Eyvind’s life. (All of us will have a bunch of keys or two lying around that hasn’t been thrown out yet…) Our family referred to them as “Krilon’s keys”, after a long passage in Krilon själv, the last part of the Krilon trilogy, called “Johannes Krilon’s keys”, where Krilon sists contemplating his life based on a box of old keys.
Now, Eyvind’s keys weren’t in a box. When I eventually took care of them, they were in a plain envelope from the National Library of Sweden, stamped 1966 and addressed to Herr Doktor Eyvind Johnson. And these keys hadn’t belonged to Krilon in real life, but to Eyvind.
One thought that this hoard of keys triggers, with its reality and its simultaneous fictitious link to Krilon, so to speak, is that the Krilon trilogy was written approximately mid-career, after a number of autobiographical books, and before the series of historical novels, thereby pointing both ahead and back in his long literary practice.”
The keys were donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Eyvind Johnson’s estate in 2024.
This walking stick was used by Mikhail Gorbachev in his later years. After his death, Dmitry Muratov received it as a gift from Gorbachev's daughter Irina Virganskaya. Gorbachev had helped finance the founding of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which under Muratov's editorship engaged in critical investigative journalism.
Muratov remembers how Gorbachev once in a restaurant pounded the table with his stick and said: "First of all, listen to my UN speech!" He picked up a sheet and read: "BAN THE WAR." Muratov asked: "Was that all?" Gorbachev replied: "Is there anything to add?" And pounded the table once more with his stick.
Dmitry Muratov donated the walking stick to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
This doctor’s bag was used by Harvey Alter during his last year of training to become a doctor. He studied at the University of Rochester and did his final internship at Strong Memorial Hospital in the early 1960s. Alter later did groundbreaking research in virology and discovered the previously unknown hepatitis C virus.
Harvey Alter donated the doctor’s bag to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
On Christmas 2022, the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski sent this card to his colleague Ales Kapucki. The blue stamp shows that the card was sent from the pre-detention centre SIZO No. 1 in Minsk, where Bialiatski was detained at the time. The greeting reads:
“Dear Ales!
I congratulate you on the feast of the birth of God!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I wish you all the best! May dreams come true!
Ales Bialiatski, 28 December 2022.”
Bialiatski had been detained in 2021, accused of tax evasion. He was in prison when it was announced in October 2022 that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2023, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for smuggling and financing political protests.
The postcard was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Ales Kapucki in 2022.
This chain has been used in various activities carried out by the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) since 2014 in response to Russia’s arrests of human rights activists in Crimea. One example is the #SaveOlegSentsov campaign, which gathered thousands of people from 40 countries to demonstrate against the illegal imprisonment of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and other political prisoners. In the end, 34 people were released, and one of them was Sentsov. The campaign appealed for support from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and was also a reminder that political prisoners are still being held in Russia.
CCL donated the chain to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
When Nelly Sachs arrived in Sweden in 1940, she had this suitcase with her. It contained only what she could carry when she escaped from Berlin with her mother on one of the last civilian flights during the Second World War. As a Jew, she had been persecuted by the Nazis and realised her life was in danger. The escape was made possible through the concerted efforts of friends. One of the friends who vouched for Nelly Sachs and her mother was Selma Lagerlöf. In her youth, Sachs had been fascinated by Lagerlöf’s stories and had corresponded with her. Nelly Sachs also became a writer. and her poetry and plays often centred on the fate of the Jewish people.
Nelly Sachs gave the suitcase to her friend and translator Margaretha Holmqvist. In 2010, Holmqvist gave it to the author Aris Fioretos, to be included in a major exhibition on Sachs’s life and work in Germany, Switzerland and Stockholm. In 2023, Fioretos donated it to the Nobel Prize Museum.
In the four years it took her to write the poems in Averno, Louise Glück listened intensely to this CD of Gustav Mahler. She described how important music was to her writing in a letter sent to the Nobel Prize Museum in connection with her donation of the CD:
“For most of my life, the writing of a book has been preceded (often by several years) by obsessive listening to a particular piece of music. I say the writing of a book as though there were a matter of steady application toward a calculated end. But in my experience, writing is erratic, a kind of possessed fluency alternating with a steady silence. Only the music is both inspired and steady; it seems to me my poems emerge from it.
During the four years in which AVERNO was written, this is what I listened to. A few readers who knew nothing of my writerly habits heard Mahler, especially in 'October' – a tribute, I think, to the music’s haunted strangeness.”
Louise Glück donated the CD to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
To Denis Mukwege, a white coat and five instruments for medical examinations represent his work to help women who are victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
School children often ask Denis Mukwege what it takes to get the Nobel Peace Prize. He usually gives a concrete example by telling them about his work as a doctor. With the same end in mind, he gave these gifts to the Nobel Prize Museum:
a white coat
a blood pressure machine
a stethoscope used for listening to the heart and lungs and other organs
a trumpet-shaped wood stethoscope for listening to the heartbeat of a foetus
a depressor and a speculum, two instruments used for gynaecological examinations
With these instruments, and empathy and passion, Mukwege has helped women who were victims of sexual violence. He works at the Panzi Hospital in his hometown Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Internationally, he is deeply committed to the fight against the use of sexual violence in wars and other conflicts.
Denis Mukwege donated the white coat and the instruments to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
This is a model of the protein Cas9, which plays a key role in CRISPR/Cas9, a powerful and precise method for altering the genome of organisms. The model was used by Jennifer Doudna, one of the scientists behind CRISPR/Cas9.
Jennifer Doudna donated the model to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
Shoelaces with little caps at the end that stops them from fraying. Elizabeth Blackburn has compared this to the purpose of the telomeres, which she studied. In her lectures, she used these large shoelaces to illustrate this. The telomeres are the end bits in the chromosomal DNA molecules. They are shaped to partly protect the chromosomes, but the telomeres shorten slightly with every cell division.
Elizabeth Blackburn donated the shoelaces to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
This circuit board is the floating point unit of the APE (Array Processor Experiment) computer, which was built in Rome, Italy, in 1985–1987. It was important for the extensive calculation needed in Giorgio Parisi's research on complex systems.
Giorgio Parisi donated the circuit board to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
This copy of a drawing was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by the human rights organisation Memorial, which is dedicated to collecting, preserving and publishing material on oppression during the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime.
The drawing “The Crow” was made by the Russian artist Boris Sveshnikov in a prison camp in 1949–1950. In 1946, when Sveshnikov was a 19-year-old art student, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for anti-Soviet propaganda. He served his sentence in the labour camp Ukho-Izhemsky in the Komi Republic in northern Russia.
The drawing includes both realistic and dream-like elements. For Memorial, it tells of the destruction of life and talent. It symbolises loneliness, injustice and lack of freedom, while also expressing hope.
Memorial donated the copy of the drawing to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
When Charles Rice turned 60, he received this egg from his mentor Dennis Barrett, who had painted it. The egg came in a protective glass. Rice met Barrett in 1970. Barrett sparked Rice’s interest in virology and became his mentor and friend. For Rice, the egg symbolises that a chance meeting can lead to new directions in life. He also wants to emphasise the importance of having a supportive mentor.
Charles Rice donated the egg and the glass to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
These ordinary chemical products contain the ingredients for a groundbreaking chemical innovation. This is a pack of sweetener containing the amino acid phenylalanine. The bottle contains acetone, which can be used to remove paint. David MacMillan's research team combined these two molecules to make the first example of a new type of catalyst: an organocatalyst. Two everyday, inexpensive and sustainable substances that could be combined to make a catalyst for a diversity of chemical reactions.
David MacMillan donated the sweetener and acetone to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
This cap for a gas tube served as a mascot for David MacMillan’s research team. They called the mascot Nabo. MacMillan is not particularly fond of Nabo, but his colleagues loved sneaking him into various contexts. For example, he appeared at MacMillan’s Nobel Prize lecture. Nabo represents MacMillan’s warm relationship to his many colleagues. But now, Nabo has joined the Nobel Prize Museum’s collection.
David MacMillan donated the mascot to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2020.
Benjamin List bought this jar of dietary supplements while conducting his Nobel Prize-awarded research. The supplements contain the substance proline, which plays a key role in List’s discovery. Proline serves as a catalyst for building molecules. List tested using it to build a molecule that occurs in two mirrored forms and discovered that only one form arose nearly every time. This is very useful when manufacturing pharmaceuticals.
Benjamin List donated the dietary supplements to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
This magnetic tape contains the first collection of measurements from Andrea Ghez’s research on a super massive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Ghez had to struggle to receive resources and access to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to conduct the project. When the measurement data arrived, it provided surprisingly clear answers. The notes from the observations include the comment “Holy shit!”. The research, however, has taken a long time, around 30 years, and during that time technology has advanced immensely. Not only was collecting data important but also preserving the data. The magnetic tape symbolises this as well.
Andrea Ghez donated the to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
This glass object is part of an advanced optical apparatus that was decisive in Reinhard Genzel’s research on a super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. He used a method called Integral Field Spectroscopy to combine image analysis with spectroscopy. This part of the apparatus, a 3D Slicer, was used in one step of his studies. Highly simplified, the experiment deals with capturing light beams, splitting the beams into different wavelengths and then interpreting the data.
Reinhard Genzel donated the optical equipment to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2022.
