The CEO of the Nobel Foundation on Professor Shechtman's win: "The cases where a person wins the prize alone, without partners, are rare, and they will be rarer in the future"

According to him, the reason for this lies in the fact that most research is currently done in groups of scientists and in international and inter-university collaborations 

"Only in rare cases does a person win the Nobel Prize alone, without partners, and after Professor Dan Shechtman wins the prize, I don't think there will be many more such cases." This is what the CEO of the Nobel Foundation, Lars Heikenstein, said yesterday at a press conference that opened Nobel Week in Stockholm.
According to him, the reason for this lies in the fact that most research is currently done in groups of scientists and in international and inter-university collaborations. The CEO of the Nobel Foundation also said that the widow of Professor Ralph Steinman, Claudia, will receive the award and will sit on the distinguished stage together with the other winners. Professor Steinman died a few days before the announcement of his winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and this is the first time in the 110 years of the prize's existence that a widow receives the prize that her husband won.
Lars Heikenstein, who took office six months ago after serving as the governor of the central bank of Sweden, discovered that the Nobel Foundation has decided to build the "Nobel Prize Center", which will be a study-research center and will serve as a meeting place for scientists, students and researchers.

"We hope it will be a center for peace," he said. He added that the foundation was not affected by the global economic crisis, but for the purpose of building the new center, it will request funding from entities for years, also because such a center did not appear in Alfred Nobel's will.

"We face two challenges," he added. "One - to maintain the uniqueness of the prestigious prize in the world and the other - to maintain the fund in the face of the global economic crisis." In response to a question from an Israeli journalist, he said that he does not rule out cooperation with large foundations, such as the Bill Gates foundation.
All the Nobel Prize winners for 2011, including Professor Danny Shechtman from the Technion, arrived in Stockholm yesterday and today they are effectively opening the busy "Nobel Week", which culminates in the awarding ceremony and the grand ball, on Saturday night, December 10.

Reporter: Amos Levev, Technion spokesman