Bagels, pretzels and 'Boo!' tell Nobel science

Committees take job of explaining principles behind the prizes seriously - and fun helps

STOCKHOLM - What do a pretzel and a scream have in common? They've all been used to explain to the public the highly complex scientific research honored with Nobel Prizes.

In recent years, the various Nobel science prize committees have gone to great lengths to make the pioneering discoveries understandable to a broad audience, occasionally finding creative and amusing ways of getting their message across.

"I think we're sometimes a little scared of being too adventurous when presenting the Nobel Prize because it is serious and important," said Sven Lidin, who served for 12 years as a member of the Nobel chemistry committee.

This year's Nobel Prize season kicks off on Monday with the medicine prize, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and the chemistry prize on Wednesday. The prizes for literature and economics will be announced in the days that follow.

The tough task of conveying the prizes' significance beyond academic and scientific circles is one the various committees take seriously.

"If you're going to reach out to more than scientists, then you have to make a lot of effort and also make sure it's accurate," said Lidin, who chaired the Nobel chemistry committee from 2012 to 2014.

Currently a chemistry professor at Lund University in Sweden, Lidin stunned the audience and elicited laughs when he shouted "Boo!" under a painting inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream to explain the 2012 Nobel chemistry prize.

"Do you remember the last time you got really scared? The dryness of the mouth, the heart that skips a beat. ... These are signs that your body is getting ready for flight or fight," he said at the time.

Lidin was explaining the discovery of "G-protein-coupled receptors".

Not many people know what they are, but they're crucial: They help our cells react to adrenaline and hormones. That's how cardiac cells know to raise the heart rate when we are startled, for example.

Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel physics committee, made headlines last year when he brought a cinnamon bun, a pretzel and a bagel to explain the field of topology, a highly specialized mathematics field concerned with unusual phases or states of matter.

'Not trained celebrities'

Referring to the two holes in the pretzel, the one hole in the bagel and the shape of a bun, he demonstrated that topology explains how a material's shape can be completely deformed into a new one without losing its core properties.

The Nobel physics committee has a large staff of social media and web experts responsible for making sure the information they provide is comprehensible.

"We are scientists. ... We are not trained celebrities," Hansson said, adding that committee members get advice from media experts before the prize announcements.

But he warned that a vivid illustration should never jeopardize the prize's prestige. "Clearly, it shouldn't be simplified to the extent that it is wrong," he said.

Agence France-Presse