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Baruch Blumberg - Winning the Nobel prize (38/80)

240 views · Published 30 June 2017 · 7:47 · Indexed 21 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of Baruch Blumberg’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QedXwz9QEXY&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyPwAEJ9YaYAsj3ANqc9teW

The late Baruch Blumberg (1925-2011) was an American scientist and doctor whose most significant contributions to medicine include the identification of the Hepatitis B virus. He was one of three co-recipients of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. [Listener: Rebecca Blanchard; date recorded: 2007]

TRANSCRIPT: It was quite unexpected. It's not that it was unexpected, I hadn't thought about it. It was neither expected or unexpected, but a few years prior to the award of the prize, a colleague of mine called and told me that he'd... he'd put my name forward for the prize. Well, I knew that, you know, lots of names are put forward, and I must say I remembered that he'd said that but I didn't give it a lot of... of thought. Well, then — the prize is usually announced about now, by the way, you know, next month — and we were sitting in our, you know, we had a little conference room where we had our so-called protocol meetings and my friend, French colleague, Bernard Larouze, he called up and he said, ‘Barry the science correspondent of La Monde has asked me to speak to you about writing a essay on your work because she has heard through sources in Stockholm that you were selected for the prize’.

[RB] This was prior to the announcement?

Prior to the announcement. Well, the fact is you can't know who the prize winner is because they... you don't know until they actually vote, until the faculty of the... of the Karoline... the Karolinska Institute actually votes on it, so... so there's a committee that reviews various candidates and then they... they make a selection which they're meant to keep very secret and then... then they go to the committee as a whole, you know the professors at the... and then they tell their decision and then the committee, the whole faculty votes on it, whether they agree or not. Well, occasionally they haven't voted, so in a way, you can't really know, and I've heard of at least one of my colleagues who had prior information that he'd won the Nobel prize and then... and then bought the champagne — I mean the guy, I can assure you, fully deserved it, he was a brilliant scientist — but it was a terrible disappointment, you know, when that happened. So I... so I said, ‘Bernard, thanks very much, you know, of course, you know, if anything happens I'll help you with the essay but, you know, I don't think you can really base...’ So I put the phone down and, you know, everybody was kind of listening, said, ‘What did Bernard say?’ I said, ‘Bernard who?’ So I told them what he'd said. And the reason he thought he knew is because he had a friend, the correspondent from La Monde, she was a friend of one of the members of the committee and La Monde is a kind of very respected paper, you know, in France. It's kind of The New York Times as well. It's a paper of record note and... so, but in any case, that was a kind of... but I mean I was happy to hear that but, you know, I wasn't, you know—however Jay McKay, he, you know, called and asked me and asked whether he should buy champagne. And I said, ‘Jay...’

[RB] Had he heard it independently?

Well, you know, Tom or somebody else or one of the others had told him. So I said, ‘If you can use it for something else!’ But... but, yes, they... it was announced some time in October. Actually I was out running. I was getting ready for the... wouldn't have been the... no, it was the middle of winter, so there wasn't any big race coming up, I was just, you know, running and when I got home, my sister called and she'd heard it. On the radio or television so she told me that there was a whole series of events, you know. We had a big party when... when I came here and they took the kids — two... two of the children were in school here... three... three were in school — so they were called out of school. They came up to the... we had a wonderful party in Fox Chase on the occasion.

[RB] Oh, that's great. What was it like going to the ceremony?

Well, to begin with, they... they sent us kind of instructions on... on the process. You know, they're really good at organizing parties, and they said you can invite your guests and they can come to the events but they’ll have to pay their own way and everything and you're allowed to invite your immediate family, you know, so they, you know, paid for that. They didn't expect four children I don't think and the... so... so I invited a lot of people, you know, and the Swedes never said anything about it but subsequently they put a limit. We actually chartered a piece of an airplane so Tim Talbot came and Wing Pepper and, you know, and Irv Millman and Ann O'Connel and... and my secretary, Ann Dortort and a whole, you know, we... it was, the party was enormous...

Read the full transcript on [https://www.webofstories.com/play/baruch.blumberg/38].

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