In a ceremony held Monday, June 13, the ambassador of Sweden joined other officials in honoring Americans who won Nobel Prizes in 2004, including MIT physics professor Frank A. Wilczek.
The ceremony celebrated the addition of seven names to the inscription on the Nobel Monument in New York City's Theodore Roosevelt Park. Wilczek shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics with David J. Gross of the University of California at Santa Barbara and H. David Politzer of the California Institute of Technology. The other 2004 American Nobel winners are Irwin A. Rose, for chemistry; Richard Axel, for physiology or medicine; Linda B. Buck, for physiology or medicine; and Edward C. Prescott, for economics.
Axel offered some remarks at the ceremony, which was presided over by Swedish Ambassador Kjell Anneling and the commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Adrian Benepe.
The Nobel Monument was raised in 2003 in a joint project initiated and overseen by the consulate general of Sweden and the city's parks department with the purpose of honoring all American Nobel laureates as well as the founder of the Nobel Prize, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The monument now displays a total of 284 names.
