Wednesday, September 15, 2021

ROBERT WILSON & PAUL MILGROM, NOBEL LAUREATES

"The Swedish Academy of Sciences called us, it was 1:40 in the morning. Since this is in the period before the election, I thought it was one of these political advertisements. So I turned off the phone, but 

fortunately the Swedish Academy knew my wife’s cell phone number and they called her. Then we talked to them and the chairman of the committee said, ‘well, we’re actually having problems reaching Paul Milgrom and we understand he lives across the street. Could you go over and wake him up?’ 

My wife and I put on clothes and went across the street. The reason there’s a video of this is that they have a system at the front of their house, that the doorbell where the chime that you would push the bell in order to ring at the door, it’s actually a camera and a microphone. As we approached the door, it’s taking a picture of us and recording what we’re saying. It’s sending all of this over the internet to Paul Milgram’s wife, Eva Myerson Milgrom, who was in Stockholm because she’s Swedish and visiting her son, granddaughter and mother. At that very moment, it was like 10 in the morning in Stockholm so she’s trying to talk to us, but we don’t hear her very well so we’re trying to get to through to Paul and knock on the door and say, ‘You’ve won a Nobel Prize!’ So that was a lot of fun actually and this video got distributed all over the world within hours." 

Last year on 12 October, economist Robert Wilson was woken up to find out that he had received the prize in economic sciences. Luckily he was also able to deliver the news to his co-laureate Paul Milgrom - they are neighbours. 

Who will be woken up this year on 11 October? Stay tuned!

Grateful thanks to 

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