The Shibboleth

An introduction

The news that a sixth prize would be added to Nobel celebrations in 1969 elicited relatively little surprise or excitement when it was announced in the year before. A short trial balloon appeared in The New York Times under a vaguely skeptical headline (a “new” Nobel Prize?) Did items follow in Le Monde? La Stampa? Frankfurter Allgemein? and The Financial Times? In Nature, Cell, Science, and Scientific American? I’d like to think so. A flurry of informed discussion followed in the Swedish press. Introducing the first laureates, an Uppsala University professor told the audience, “The creation of this new Nobel prize has had an electrifying effect.” The newspaper-reading populace in Sweden may be the most literate in the world.