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Armbindel This armband was used by personnel in the British Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. The use of a red cross on a white background as a symbol of neutrality and protection in armed conflict was established in the first Geneva Convention in 1864. The convention regulates the rights and protection of wartime prisoners, civilians and military personnel. The background to the convention is Henry Dunant's founding of the international Red Cross movement in 1863. The Red Cross emblem has since that time been the distinctive mark of Red Cross personnel and the medical services of the armed forces.
The armband was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2023.
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Manifest I detta manifest från oktober 1915 uppmanar kvinnor från olika länder för omedelbara fredsförhandlingar i det pågående första världskriget. Bland de fem undertecknarna återfinns två blivande fredspristagare: Jane Addams och Emily Greene Balch.
Manifestet har sitt ursprung i den internationella kvinnokongressen i Haag 1915. Kongressen hade fler än 1 100 deltagare och ledde till bildandet av Internationella kvinnoförbundet för fred och frihet med Jane Addams som första ordförande. I manifestet beskrivs hur delegationer efter kongressen besökte 14 huvudstäder i krigförande och neutrala länder för att försöka få fredsförhandlingar till stånd. "Som kvinnor var det möjligt för oss, som kom från både krigförande och neutrala nationer, att mötas mitt under pågående krig och få till stånd ett utbyte av frågor och svar mellan huvudstäder som var blockerade för varandra."
Manifestet underströk att även länder som stod utanför kriget hade ett ansvar:
"Den olidliga ansvarsbördan för det hopplösa fortsättandet av detta krig vilar inte längre enbart på viljan hos de krigförande nationerna. Den vilar också på viljan hos de neutrala regeringar och människor som har besparats krigets dråpslag. Även om de vill så kan de inte befria sig från sin del av ansvaret för att kriget fortsätter."
Manifestet införskaffades av Nobelprismuseet 2024.
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Nansenpass utfärdat 1933 Detta Nansenpass utfärdades i Tyskland 1933 för en kvinna född i Ryssland.
Nansen-passen, som tillkom efter en idé av Fridtjof Nansen, gav under 1920- och 1930-talet många flyktingar en möjlighet att resa.
Efter första världskriget rådde på flera håll i Europa kaotiska förhållanden. Gränser mellan nationer flyttades och hundratusentals människor var på flykt. De flesta av dem var ryssar som blivit statslösa och inte kunde få pass för att resa. På uppdrag av Nationernas Förbund förhandlade Nansen med olika parter och lyckades få gehör för en idé om att särskilda pass skulle utfärdas. Nansenpassen vann brett internationellt erkännande.
Detta Nansenpass köptes av Nobelprismuseet 2024.
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Nansenpass utfärdat 1923 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.
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Stone from the bridge on the Drina The stone comes from the large stone bridge in Višegrad in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The bridge is at the heart of Ivo Andrićs most important work, The Bridge on the Drina. In the novel the bridge is the backdrop for a series of stories spanning several centuries. The book captures a range of human destinies and casts light upon the encounters and frictions between different cultures and religions.
The stone was presented to the Nobel Prize Museum by Igor Crnadak, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2017.
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Reproduktion av utdelningsstämpel Under flera decennier syntes på många svenska kuvert en scen ur Selma Lagerlöfs bok Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige. Med träffsäker symbolik fungerade bilden som stämpel på försändelser på väg till mottagare i landets olika delar. Bilden togs fram av reklamkonstnären Bengt Mellberg 1969 och detta är en reproduktion från originalet.
Bilden fungerade som utdelningsstämpel för masskorsband, en form av massförsändelser som tidigare användes. Avsändaren avtalade med Posten ett rabatterat pris och försändelserna behövde ej frankeras. Förlagor för stämpeln lämnades i stället ut till tryckerier och stämpeln trycktes direkt på försändelser som skickades ut till många adressater.
Hur många försändelser som stämpeln tryckts på går inte att säga exakt, men det kan röra sig om sex miljarder.
Bilden donerades till Nobelprismuseet av Bengt Mellberg 2001.
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Phonograph record with nerve impulses in a cat These records are from the Swedish neurophysiologist Yngve Zotterman’s experiments confirming the theories of the medicine laureate Corneille Heymans.
Nerve impulses are weak electrical currents that can be converted into sound. The recordings document nerve signals from the carotid sinus (a bulge in the carotid artery on the neck) of cats at different blood oxygen levels. Heymans’s research focused on the carotid sinus and how it regulates breathing, and Zotterman’s results further corroborated his hypotheses.
In 1939, when Heymans was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize for medicine, the Second World War had just started, and the Nobel Prize laureates were unable to visit Stockholm. In a lecture on Swedish Radio, Zotterman used his own recording of nerve impulses in his presentation of Heymans’s research. He informed Heymans of the broadcast times, so he could listen to the presentation. Heymans understood the lecture even though it was in Swedish, and asked if he could have the recordings. This was probably when Zotterman added the descriptions in English which can be heard on these records. Heymans used them in his lectures for many years. When they were worn out, he asked Zotterman to send him new ones.
The records were donated to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.
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Doctoral thesis In his doctoral thesis from 1884, Svante Arrhenius presented a revolutionary theory on how salts, when dissolved in water, divide into electrically charged ions. At Uppsala University, his ideas met with skepticism, and his dissertation was barely approved. His theory eventually became accepted and resulted in his Nobel Prize.
The doctoral thesis was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.
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Replica of a cloud chamber The cloud chamber, developed by C.T.R. Wilson, became an important instrument for studying the tracks of speeding particles and radiation.
While hiking in Scotland, C.T.R. Wilson was fascinated by the light phenomena that sometimes occurred in clouds and fog. To study these more closely, he tried to create artificial fog in a laboratory environment. This was the beginning of Wilson’s cloud chamber. However, instead of providing a tool for the study of weather and light phenomena, the chamber was primarily used to investigate the components of matter. Particles passing through the fog chamber leave visible tracks when they knock out electrons from the atoms they pass.
This cloud chamber is a replica of Wilson’s early model.
The replica of the cloud chamber was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.
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Cryostat This cryostat is a replica of a device used by Pyotr Kapitsa around 1940 to study superfluid helium. A glass “spindle”with six capillaries is balanced on a needle in a container with liquid helium. If a ray of light is focused on the device so that the liquid is heated, the spindle begins to rotate. The explanation is that at temperatures below 2.19 Kelvin, liquid helium is a mixture of normal liquid helium and a suprafluid helium. When heated, the superfluid quantum liquid is transformed into normal liquid and squirts out through the capillaries. Because the superfluid liquid can seep in along the walls of the capillaries, this process goes on for as long as heat is added.
The cryostat was manufactured at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, which Pyotr Kapitsa helped to found. It was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.
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Key shaped like a crocodile Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitsa had a specially-designed key cut for the Mond Laboratory at Cambridge where he worked in the 1920s and 1930s. The key’s design was inspired by Kapitsa’s nickname for his mentor and 1908 chemistry laureate Ernest Rutherford, “The Crocodile”. This later became Kapitsa’s own nickname. There are several theories on how the nickname came about. Kapitsa’s wife Anna revealed in her later years that none of the more imaginative ones were true, but they are interesting nonetheless. Kapitsa himself offered one explanation: “In Russia, the crocodile is a symbol of the head of the family, and is both feared and admired because of its stiff neck and inability to move in any direction but forward. It just keeps on going straight ahead with its jaws wide open – just like science, just like Rutherford.”
This key is a copy of the original, which is kept at Kapitsa’s laboratory in Moscow. The replica was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.
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Light guide This light guide comes from the large CERN particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, where the smallest particles of matter are studied. The experiments often involve hundreds of researchers, and the equipment is both large and small. Light guides like this one were used in an experiment to find “W” and “Z” particles. The energy from incoming particles is reradiated as light using the light guides, but with a lower energy. Light guides were used to adjust the radiation so that it matches the sensitivity of the apparatus and gives better measurements. The experiment earned Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984.
The light guide was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by CERN in 2000.
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Oar An oar symbolises the success of Cambridge University in science. Boat races are a common event in Cambridge. Every year, Cambridge competes against Oxford, a race that is taken very seriously. Standards are rigorous, also, for the scientists who work at Cambridge. To obtain a position at Cambridge, you have to constantly achieve new results. Only the best are allowed to remain. More than 120 Nobel Prize laureates have some link to Cambridge.
The oar was acquired by the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.