The Nobel prize banquet has been cancelled for the first time in over half a century as fears over the coronavirus spread continue around the world.
The event traditionally marks the closing of the Nobel Week, when the winners of the coveted prize are invited to the Swedish capital Stockholm for talks and the award ceremony.
While the Nobel Prize winners for 2020 will be announced, the banquet however, that draws around 1,300 guests and always held on December 10, will not go ahead.
The last time the banquet was cancelled was in 1956, in protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary. It was also cancelled during World War One and Two.
The prizes for achievements in fields such as science, literature and peace were created and funded in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.
“There are two problems. You cannot gather that many people next to each other. And it is uncertain whether people can travel to Sweden to the extent they want,” Nobel Foundation Chairman Lars Heikensten told Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper.
All the announcements will be streamed live at nobelprize.org this year.
Traditionally, the prize-winners join the Swedish royal family along with approximately 1,300 guests for the banquet at Stockholm’s City Hall after the award ceremony — held on December 10, the anniversary of the death of the prizes’ founder Alfred Nobel. The announcement of the prizes (Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Economics) will still be held as scheduled between October 5 and October 12, the Foundation was quoted saying in an AFP report.
The Nobel Prize Museum on Stortorget, the main square in Stockholm’s Old Town, also reopened to public earlier this month under controlled conditions.
The official Nobel Prize site shared details about new additions to the museum upon its reopening. The exhibition, titled Contagious, “explores the work of Nobel Prize-awarded scientists who have increased our knowledge of viruses, mapped our immune system and developed vaccines.”The site has also shared a word of advise so people can stay safe amid the coronavirus pandemic. “Visitors who cannot travel to the museum during the summer can also view the exhibition digitally,” the statement on the site adds.