Speaker
Description
The Nobel archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences contain all valid nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physics, as well as the special reports written by the Nobel Committee members in the years open to research. It also contains the general report by the whole Committee with comments on all nominated physicists and that end up with the Committee’s conclusion and their proposal for the award. Formally, also other archival material is to be found in this archive, viz. the discussion by the Physics class on the general report, as well as the minutes of the Academy in pleno, where the formal decision is made. This archive was totally secret and only to be used by the committee itself in their Prize work. But in 1974 the statutes of the Nobel Foundation were changed so that material older than 50 years could be accessed by bona fide historians of science. This talk will present the Nobel archives in physics 1901–1972 through some historical examples, but it will also ask questions like: is the now long line of Nobel Prizes in physics the same as the history of physics since 1901? What might have been missed?
