STANFORD NOBEL LAUREATES REFLECT ON WINNING THE PRIZE

From inspiring future scientists to getting name-checked on The Simpsons, past recipients of the prestigious award reveal how it has affected their lives. What’s it like to win a Nobel Prize?

Stanford physical chemist W.E. Moerner, who received the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry, and Stanford economist Guido W. Imbens, who received the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences, reflect on what changed – and what didn’t – after receiving the award.

As of 2024, three dozen Stanford faculty members have been named Nobel laureates, including the following faculty members from the Department of Chemistry: Linus C. Pauling (1954: Chemistry | 1962: Peace Prize), Paul J. Flory (1974), Henry Taube (1983), W. E. Moerner (2014), and most recently, Carolyn R. Bertozzi (2022)

The 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry will be announced on Wednesday, October 8th.

Where were you when you learned you had won?

Imbens: I was at home and was woken up by a call from Sweden. It’s just this very strange sensation as they tell you, “Congratulations, we’ve voted to award you the prize and we’re going to have a press conference in half an hour.” So you have this half hour where there’s nothing happening, but there’s also a lot happening. It was this very delightful, exciting moment when the rest of the world didn’t know yet. Once it was announced, there were telephone calls and interviews the whole night and morning. Stanford sent over a team for video, photos, and to help with the press. Our kids made pancakes for the Stanford crew, who had the idea of having the three kids interview me, and the video is an absolute highlight from that morning.

Moerner: I was in Brazil at a science conference, and I was too cheap to pay for my cell phone to work there, so the Nobel committee did not know how to reach me! Instead I got a WhatsApp message from my wife, who said, “Quickly, turn your phone on!” Then I knew something was afoot and learned about the prize from her! I got a feeling of “Is this really happening?” I knew the course of my life would change immediately. That’s an interesting feeling. It’s a feeling of lost control as something exciting and wonderful is beginning. I quickly got back to California, and my wife had me upgraded to first class. She knew I needed to be comfortable and rested because there was going to be a huge number of things happening as soon as I got back.

What was it like going to Stockholm to accept the prize?

Imbens: There was no ceremony in Stockholm that year because of COVID, so we went the following year. It’s quite an amazing experience, and it was extra special because they invited the laureates from the two years impacted by COVID. One of the best parts is meeting people in other disciplines who obviously do very interesting work and who are all so excited to be there. My son, who was then 18, got to meet astrophysicist Andrea M. Ghez, who won the Nobel Prize in physics the year before. My son’s favorite NOVA video as a child was the one on the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, and Ghez was a narrator in the video. My son even got to dance with her at the ball after the banquet.

Moerner: The experience in Stockholm is both incredibly exciting and overwhelming, because every minute is planned for the first week. Laureates get a little book which provides the schedule for that particular laureate, and each laureate has a driver and a car, which says “Nobel Prize” on the side of it. There were the big events the first week, such as the banquet in the town hall, as well as the visits to the Nobel Foundation and to schools. There are all kinds of things you would not believe. We were provided with reindeer venison three times during the week at different banquets. The second week, I visited wonderful universities and met many students across Sweden. I also got to visit Karlskoga, where Alfred Nobel kept his horses, which is why Sweden hosts the Nobel Prize ceremonies!

How did winning the prize change your life?

Imbens: It does change the way people outside of academics treat you, and it opens up a lot of new opportunities. The Swedes are very keen on having people take on this role model part, and they took us to high schools there to talk to the students. That was a very nice and fun experience. The attention and invitations die down, but as far as I hear from other people, it doesn’t really go away. It’s a permanent change.

Within the academic world, it doesn’t change things all that much. I still write my papers, I submit my papers, I get them rejected. But it has broadened my research and changed a little bit of what I try to do. I spend more time trying to leverage what I do by working with students and other groups to do what I can to push the field forward.

Moerner: Over the next few years, a huge number of invitations appeared to give lectures all over the world, many to students and young scientists, which was very rewarding. Ten years later, there still are invitations to give lectures around the world. The exciting part about winning the prize is that I can have a bigger impact, but I don’t want to go outside my wheelhouse. I can be involved on boards, committees, and speak on important topics – for example, science and the way it’s being treated these days. I’ve been blessed with support for my research, from Stanford and government agencies like the NIH and the DOE. It was a little bit easier to get funding at times. On the other hand, I have to write applications for grants and so forth, just like everybody else, and my work has to be judged properly by peers to be worthwhile.

What was your most unusual experience as a result of winning?

Imbens: I went back to Holland and they invited me to go to a chess tournament and meet Magnus Carlsen. It is very interesting the opportunities you get and the people you get to meet, and that’s been a lot of fun.

Moerner: In 2010, there was a particular episode of The Simpsons when the family wakes up in the middle of the night because Homer wants to watch the Nobel Prize announcement. They had set up a betting pool with family members voting for different people to get the different prizes. My name was on the betting pool, so The Simpsons basically guessed that I could win – Milhouse voted for me!

Any other thoughts you’d like to share?

Imbens: Recognition like this reminds me of the contribution of all the people who have helped me along the way, from my parents and siblings to my fellow students and my advisors, and later my own students and co-authors who shared their ideas and thoughts and spent their time helping me refine the ideas we worked on. Sharing that night and morning with my wife and children was, as Susan described it, a truly magical experience.

Moerner: I have been truly fortunate to have many dedicated students, postdocs, mentors, and collaborators over the years who contributed centrally to the work that was recognized by the Nobel Prize. I also really want to mention the amazing support from my wife and family throughout this whole process. My wife has been an incredibly valued source of encouragement over the entire 42 years of our marriage. Happily, she also had a special moment on the announcement day. One of the local TV stations wanted to interview me, and since I was in Brazil, they said, “OK, Mrs. Moerner, we will come and interview you!”

The Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm exhibits artifacts from past laureates that offer a glimpse into their lives and work. What object did you donate?

Imbens: When I did the work with Josh Angrist for which I got the prize, we were living in Harvard faculty housing and we didn’t have laundry facilities there. On Saturday mornings we would go to the local laundromat and do our laundry. That’s where we worked on the paper for which we won the prize. So I donated a bottle of laundry detergent to the museum. Recently, the museum had an advertising campaign and they had posters with “the detergent that changed the world.”

Moerner: I provided a small part of the original low-temperature apparatus from 1989 for detecting single molecules to underscore that important new results can arise from modest, homemade designs. It includes a tiny lens glued inside a nut on a thin sheet of flexible metal, with a hand-wound coil and a magnet. Adjusting the coil bends the metal to change the focus position of the lens. This apparatus was placed in a superfluid liquid helium cryostat to maintain 2 degrees kelvin, in order to have a good chance to observe a single molecule in a crystal.

W.E. Moerner is the Harry S. Mosher Professor in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S). He is a professor of chemistry and, by courtesy, of applied physics in H&S. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014, with Eric Betzig and Stefan W. Hell, for developing the microscopy techniques that make it possible to visualize precise molecular mechanisms inside living cells.

Guido Imbens is director of Stanford Data Science, the Applied Econometrics Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, a professor of economics in H&S, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He received the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with David Card and Joshua Angrist for their work in econometrics and statistics.

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