Gold medal for Nobel laureates every year - Photo: AFP
Sharing with Tuoi Tre, historian Gustav Källstrand - senior curator of the Nobel Museum (Sweden) - affirmed that the 2025 Nobel season has recalled the quintessential value of this prestigious award, proving the cross-century vision of inventor Alfred Nobel.
Mr. Källstrand is a leading expert on the history of the Nobel Prize, with decades of research and extensive knowledge of the traditions, awarding process and cultural legacy of this prestigious award.
Alfred Nobel's dream is still alive
* Please evaluate the achievements awarded this year's Nobel Prize. What impressed you most?
- I would like to start with the Nobel Prize in Economics . This prize is particularly interesting because it was awarded to economic historian Joel Mokyr, who has demonstrated how knowledge and ideas can drive economic growth. In other words, this year's Nobel Prize honors how ideas change the world.
The annual Nobel Prize ceremony usually opens with a reminiscence of the prize's founder, Alfred Nobel, who wished that scientific knowledge and contributions to peace and literature could make the world a better place.
This year's Economics Prize has proven that Alfred Nobel's dream is not only still alive, but also completely true. In a deeper sense, it is how advances in knowledge can create growth, how ideas really can change the world .
Turning to the Physics Prize, we see the broad vision of the Nobel Prize. The scientists who won the prize began their experiments 40 years ago, motivated by pure curiosity: could it be possible to make materials in this world behave strangely like particles in the quantum world?
At the time, no one thought this would have any practical applications. But now these strange quantum phenomena are creating pioneering technologies of science such as quantum cryptography and quantum computers.
For me, this is the highlight of this year's Nobel Prize: ideas can change the world. Even the most seemingly impractical and curious research can change the world under the right circumstances.
The Nobel Prize is not a prize for a scientist’s lifetime contribution. It is a prize for specific ideas and discoveries that change the world. When the discoveries that won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year were made 40 years ago, they could not have been awarded because they were interesting but not important enough. Now we see that they have laid the foundation for a new field of research and technology. That is why it is now the right time to honor them.
* Do you think there will be a new Nobel category in the future, especially when technology is changing the world more and more strongly?
- I don't think the Nobel Prize should add any more categories. It's reasonable to keep the current categories because if we keep adding more categories to be fair to all scientific fields, there will be no end. Although there are only three categories in natural sciences (physics, chemistry and biomedicine), the Nobel Prize has maintained its prestige for more than a century.
It is important to understand that the Nobel Prize focuses on fundamental scientific discoveries, the foundational ideas from which later technologies are developed. For example, the 2024 Physics Prize will be awarded to machine learning models – the theoretical foundation for artificial intelligence (AI). Previously, the prize was awarded to transistors and integrated circuits – the foundations of the electronics industry.
The Nobel Prize deliberately places less emphasis on the process of translating fundamental discoveries into practical applications. This is a complex process that requires engineering and applied science, but is not the focus of the prize. Instead, the prize seeks to honor fundamental breakthroughs in science, ideas that change the way we see the world, not their commercialization.
The Nobel Foundation therefore encourages the establishment of separate prizes for applied technology, rather than expecting the Nobel Prize to cover all fields.
Nobel Prize Winners in Vietnam and Everywhere
Historian Gustav Källstrand - Photo: Volante
* What can Vietnam learn from this year's Nobel Prize in promoting development based on science, technology and innovation, and how to nurture Nobel-caliber talent?
- I would like to emphasize the need to nurture Nobel-level talent. Such talent exists in Vietnam and everywhere, it is important to provide them with the environment and path for their development. Investment in universities, research and innovative businesses is essential. Today, many Nobel laureates come from the industrial sector.
130 years ago, many scientists were aristocrats because they needed wealth to do research. Today, at university, you are surrounded by scientists and you get funding. The Nobel Prize shows the importance of creating these opportunities.
Everyone knows that the Nobel Prize has a bit of luck to it. This prize, or any innovation, or any success, is more or less about being in the right place at the right time. But of course, if there were more right places, we would have more people in the right place at the right time. So we need to create more opportunities and create more pathways to science.
Looking at this year’s awards, the intersection of economics and science shows that there are always new fields opening up. For countries that have difficulty competing in fields dominated by large countries, they should not follow the trend of many people doing it but should explore fields that no one has paid attention to.
The Nobel's biggest message is to keep faith and be optimistic. As economic historian Joel Mokyr (Nobel Prize in Economics 2025) said: "We don't know anything yet. The best is yet to come."
* The world is changing rapidly, will the Nobel Prize change with it?
- For example, this year we have a female winner in the field of science. I think there will be more female winners in the future. I also believe that there will be more winners who were born and worked outside the US and Western Europe.
This is not a random guess, but a proven fact. In the early years, most Nobel Prize winners came from France, Germany, England, etc. Then Americans started winning the prize, but the first wave of American winners were usually educated in Europe. They finished their studies, returned to the US to work and do research. Then after World War II, most of the winners did research in the US.
In the early 2000s, a boom in Nobel Prize winners from Japan began. The first batch of scientists were born in Japan but moved to the United States to study and research.
The second group worked in the United States and then returned to their home countries. However, their prize-winning work was still done while they were in the United States. Now, most Japanese scientists win Nobel Prizes for research in their home countries.
I think other countries in the world will follow that model. It is not far-fetched to say that a Vietnamese Nobel Prize winner will be in the next few years. However, it is likely that this person’s research will be done in Western Europe or the United States. But I think the process will be faster and the second or third Vietnamese person will probably win the prize for research done at a Vietnamese university.
When we diversify the pool of Nobel Prize winners, we will also diversify the discoveries that are in contention. Then we will have more discoveries because there are more people doing science, and science will also develop better.
Interesting artifacts
Today each Nobel Prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).
The Nobel Museum in Sweden now displays artifacts donated by Nobel Prize winners to tell their stories. For example, Dr. Barry Marshall donated a test tube containing the bacteria he drank to prove the cause of stomach ulcers, and economist Angus Deaton donated fishing bait because his ideas often came to him while he was fishing. These artifacts help visitors see how creativity comes from real people with passion and curiosity.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/cac-y-tuong-thay-doi-the-gioi-tu-nobel-2025-2025102610352027.htm
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