

The Nobel Prize is a well-oiled machine. Everything is programmed down to the last detail, starting with the e-mail sent to journalists at the beginning of September inviting them to the official announcement. The prize distribution schedule is also meticulously structured, with one award bestowed each day during the first week of October, starting with medicine, followed by physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and concluding with economics, all leading up to the ceremony on December 10.
But on the morning of Wednesday, October 4, a glitch derailed everything. While the live presentation of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was scheduled for 11:45 am from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Swedish newsrooms began to panic a little after 7:30 am. Several journalists had just received a press release announcing that the prize had been awarded to Moungi Bawendi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Louis Brus (Columbia University) and Alexei Ekimov (Nanocrystals Technology Inc.), "for the development and synthesis of quantum dots."
While taking the precaution of using the conditional tense, the kingdom's media published the names of the winners a few moments later. For there was no room for doubt – the press release had indeed come from the Royal Academy of Sciences, a fact confirmed by several of its members, while assuring them that the official decision would only be taken in the morning, at a meeting of the committee responsible for awarding the prize.
For a little over four hours, the situation was unclear, before geneticist Hans Ellengren, the Academy's permanent secretary, confirmed at 11:45 am that Bawendi, Brus and Ekimov were indeed this year's winners. Speaking live on the phone, Bawendi saved the committee's honor, assuring them that he was completely unaware of the mix-up and that he was fast asleep in his bed when the committee woke him to tell him the news.
Damage was accordingly limited. At the press conference, however, Ellengren apologized for this departure from tradition, saying he was "deeply sorry," without being able to explain, however, what might have happened. A "very active" investigation to determine the origin of the blunder is underway, he affirmed, assuring once again that the winners had been officially designated in the morning, but without saying whether other candidates were in the running. This will have to wait until 2073, as required by the rules, which only allow archives to be opened to the public after 50 years.
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