Recalling our royal adventures in Stockholm, Sweden

Dean'sMessage

It was 3 p.m. on December 7, and night had fallen. A snowstorm was swirling outside, in strong contrast to the 75-degree weather we left in Princeton only the day before. We took a bus and a taxi to reach the Grand Hotel, which is very grand indeed. Our room had a view of the Royal Palace across the Stockholm harbor. The Swedes said this was the biggest snowstorm in three years. The storm slowed traffic and caused us to miss a reception and the Literature Lecture.

Next morning, we climbed into a bus labeled "NOBEL-BIL" and headed for Stockholm University and the Aula Magna for the Chemistry Lecture. The Aula has an enormous room in the style of a theater and seats more than 1,000 people.

John Pople gave the Chemistry Lecture; his colaureate Walter Kohn did not come. Pople used an overhead slide projector with hand-scribbled slides. He quoted a Dirac statement of 1929 that all the laws of chemistry are known, and the only complications are in the computation.

Lunch was in the student center. After lunch, we saw a movie about Alfred Nobel. Born in 1836, he was both an inventive chemist and a shrewd businessman. He tamed the blasting oil nitroglycerin by absorption in a beach sand called kieselguhr and named it dynamite. His product became a bestseller and made him a wealthy man. He willed his entire estate to the Nobel Foundation before he died in 1896. Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1901; the first was given to Wilhelm Roentgen for discovering X-rays.

Daniel Tsui spoke in the afternoon about his experimental discovery with Horst Störmer in 1982. They studied conductivity in a sample shaped like a Popsicle stick, long and flat. Hall had discovered in 1879 that if you have an electric current flowing in the long direction of a thin gold plate, and a magnetic field perpendicular to the flat direction, the current would move sidewise, i.e., the Hall effect. When you increase the magnetic field, the Hall voltage increases smoothly.

In 1980 von Klitzing showed that if the stick is a sandwich structure of semiconductors, the temperature is cooled to 460 degrees below zero, and it is in the presence of a fierce magnetic field, the Hall voltage changes from a smooth line to a stairway of risers and steps, i.e., the quantum Hall effect. The steps are given numbers "1, 2, 3, etc." to represent the number of electrons involved.

In 1982 Tsui and Störmer discovered that under even lower temperatures

Electrical Engineering Professor Daniel Tsui, center, receives the Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf. Photo by James Wei

and more fierce magnetic fields, one step is split into three steps, making it appear that an electron has split into three pieces, i.e., the fractional quantum Hall effect. Dan's lecture was extremely clear so that any freshman in engineering could follow what he said. Horst is a showman who cracked jokes, talked with his hands, and showed a photo of himself in earlier days with long hair coming down to his waist. Robert Laughlin explained that a year after Tsui's and Störmer's discovery, he came up with an explanation for this phenomenon that was based on a new concept--the electrons were condensed into a new type of quantum fluid.

We returned by bus to the Grand Hotel. Dan Tsui had a limousine, a driver, and an attaché to guide him and his family around. When they returned to the Grand Hotel, they ran into Bruce Springsteen. Daughters Aileen and Judy rushed to get his autograph, and told him that they are also from New Jersey. It was pretty clear who the real star was.

On Wednesday we had a guided bus tour of the city. The sky was always overcast and very dark with only four hours of twilight around midday. Stockholm is a very beautiful city, which has enjoyed peace for many centuries and is undamaged by war.

A reception hosted by the Nobel Foundation was held that evening. The Foundation is located behind the Royal Palace and the Cathedral and shares a building with the Borse, or Stock Exchange. The Foundation had invited, by competition, 24 young students from all over the world to spend a week at the Nobel festivities. The students stayed on a three-masted ship anchored in the harbor as a hostel.

Then the big day arrived: December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel. We took the bus to the Konserthuset, or the Concert House. Numerous college students acted as ushers. They wore tails and ball gowns, blue and yellow sashes, and they all wore their student caps, which are white on top with black visors. The effect was a charming blend of informal and formal. The hall is a shoebox, just like the Boston Symphony Hall and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, with two sets of balconies. Behind the stage is a mezzanine balcony for the orchestra. We were in the first row of the second balcony with superb views. The stage had six semicircular rows of seats for the Nobel Committee and other dignitaries. There were nine red chairs on the front left for the laureates. There were three blue and gold chairs on the right for Royal Aunt Hertiginnan, King Carl XVI Gustaf, and Queen Silvia. The podium was in blue with numerous three-pointed gold crowns.

The best seats in the house were in the first row of the orchestra, right in front of the stage. Linda Tsui sat there in the center with daughters Aileen and Judy on her right. Princess Christina, sister to the king, sat to the left of Linda.

The royal party arrived. The king wore tails and a few decorations. The queen wore a crown, a peach-colored gown that glittered, and a pale blue sash. The royal aunt wore white and a blue sash. Then the laureates arrived from the center stage rear and sat down in the red chairs. Dan sat at the first chair closest to the audience.

The physics prizes were presented first because physics is the senior prize. Dan was the senior of the three physics laureates. He came up to the king, they shook right hands, and the prize and certificate were presented using the left hands under the handshake. The trumpets flourished and the king

Professor Daniel Tsui delivers his Nobel prize lecture in the Aula Magna at Stockholm University. Photo by James Wei

retreated two steps; Dan bowed to the king, turned to the left and bowed to the committee, turned to the right and bowed to the audience. Then he turned around and walked back to his chair, without having to learn how to walk backwards like an Orange Key guide!

The process was repeated with Störmer and Laughlin. Presentation of the Chemistry Prize was next, followed by a musical interlude. The soprano Katarina Dalayman sang "Dich, teure Halle" from Tannhauser. Then came the three Medicine Prizes, the Literature Prize, and the Economics Prize. The king was confused for a moment, then left the stage the same way he came in, trailed by the queen and the royal aunt. The stage dissolved into a melee of congratulations.

Then we piled into a bus for the Stadshuset, or City Hall. It is quite incongruous to see so many elegant tails and ball gowns hanging on straps, like in a subway. The City Hall has a bold tower rising above the harbor and all the lavish refinements of a royal palace. The banquet was in the "Blue Room," which has nothing blue in it. It is a rectangular arcaded courtyard inspired by the Italian Renaissance, but the roof is covered to make it suitable for northern winters. The long axis is in the north-south direction, with a full-length balcony on the east. A grand staircase descends from the balcony on the north wall and turns south. How do you seat 1,200 guests in a banquet? Imagine a giant spine in the north-south direction, with 12 perpendicular detached ribs on each side. The spine is the head table, which seats 90 people. The 24 rib tables seat 30 people each. There were also 41 satellite tables surrounding this central arrangement. The tables glittered with candles, glasses, and gold and silver tableware. The King sat in the exact center, which is between rib tables 6 and 7, and the queen sat on the opposite side between rib tables 18 and 19. Those seated at the head table included other royalty and nobility, ambassadors and ministers, and Nobel laureates and their spouses. I sat at the end of table 5.

Waiters and waitresses dressed in white walked in pairs along the length of the balcony and descended the grand staircase with each course. They stood motionless at each table until they received a signal to serve, which they did with the precision of a ballet.

The entertainment began at 9 p.m. The soprano came down the grand staircase dressed in white, like in a wedding, and sang a song by Soderman.

Recipients of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, from left, are Horst Störmer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui.

Then she removed the white gown to reveal a red gown, and sang a song by Sibelius. Then she removed the red gown to reveal a gold outfit, and sang a song by Berlioz. Yes indeed, she removed the gold outfit and revealed a black pants suit, and sang a song by Verdi. I thought three more, and you should sing Salome. But she stopped there.

To the music of Fledermaus, the procession of waiters brought the dessert--Glace Nobel, which went with Sandeman's Tawny Port.

At 10 p.m. we had a procession of flags from different universities, and the students sang to us. The laureates spoke briefly. A medicine laureate, Robert Furchgott, talked about how they discovered that nitric oxide, or NO, is a signaling molecule in the central nervous system. He also pointed out that Alfred Nobel suffered from angina pectoris, but refused to take nitroglycerin, which breaks down to NO, for relief. Pople gave a short speech about computational chemistry, and Laughlin, speaking for his physics colleagues, extolled the importance of parents. Amartya Sen talked about Tagore and Chandrasekhar.

The king and queen left the head table and went up the grand stairway at 10:30 p.m. The Golden Hall is next to the grand balcony, and it is completely covered with gold mosaics with a mixture of traditional and modem themes. On the north wall is a giant portrait of Queen Malarme, and on each of the long side walls there are seven niches, celebrating different heroes and heroines in Swedish history. One of them is the engineer John Ericsson!

A band played music for dancing. The king and queen did not stay to dance. The dancing lasted until 3 or 4 a.m., and another student party followed that. But for us, this was the end of a wonderful and glorious round of festivities that will stay in our memories forever.