The Economist.
I describe the piece as the Stockholm Oscars because it was quite like the Oscars.
They make a real fuss of the prize winners.
Geoff Carr, The Economist's senior editor for science and technology,
had the rare opportunity to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in December 1999.
They give them chauffeur-driven cars
and you have to dress up for the dinner on this in white tie,
not just black tie, white tie and tails and all that sort of thing.
And it used to be the case that Swedish maidens with candles in their hairs
would go and bring coffee and breakfast to the prize winners in their bedrooms in the hotel.
This no longer happens, partly health and safety reasons,
partly I think for reasons of propriety.
But it happened in my day.
And there's a medal, and the handing over of the cheque.
Every year that ceremony takes place on December the 10th
to mark the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death,
but it's two months before that in the first week of October
that the winners themselves of science's most prestigious and coveted prizes are announced.
Since 1901, discoveries such as the electron, radioactivity,
penicillin, CRISPR gene editing and even machine learning have all been recognised.