Nobel Lecture

Ladies and Gentlemen! It gives me great pleasure to be giving the Nobel Lecture before you. In it I shall be reporting on the results of my research for which the Royal Caroline Institute permit me here once again to give public expression of my deepest gratitude has awarded me the Nobel Prize. Naturally I can only present a fraction of these results and I shall have to content myself with telling you briefly the history of those discoveries, the understanding of which only requires a minimum of specialist knowledge. For, as one becomes immersed in the material, the things which must be known for a proper comprehension of what follows become so numerous and complicated that it would almost certainly be impossible for the lay public to follow and I must regard as laymen, Ladies and Gentlemen, not only the many non-medical persons among you, but also the representatives of other branches of medical science whose presence here does me great honour. I have already given, on repeated occasions, a historical account of my discoveries. I must, therefore, ask the indulgence of those specialist colleagues, the Prize judges and the members of the Royal Caroline Institute who have found my work worthy of the highest scientific distinction if I say nothing which is new or interesting to them. This, if I have understood it aright, is not the purpose of the Nobel Lecture either, for it should serve far more to give the lay public a glimpse into the world of thought and work of the research scientist, just as the distinguished founder of this prize was a layman himself. To raise the general cultural level of mankind by promoting scientific work lay very close to the heart of Alfred Nobel. I shall ask this eminent gathering to regard my lecture from this standpoint.