[.the.noblest.stories.]

It’s October, and came the week that would make my heart race with curiosity: the Nobel Prize announcement.

I can’t say why I have such inexplicable fondness to this event. A whiff of memory would take me to days where my father and I were leafing the encyclopedia for children. It was a set of 12 big books, heavily illustrated, and nicely translated to Indonesian language.

I set my heart instantly to those about astronomy, physics, and mythology. After school was identical with time to marvel at planets, moon and stars, to be inspired by Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, to get lost in the Olympian world of Athena and Hercules.

By the time I was in high school, my admiration of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein didn’t fade. The most expensive book I bought for my self at that time was the biography of Albert Einstein, and my profound obsession was having luminescent radium on my bedside table, just like Marie Curie (thanksfully it was only a dream, having radium nearby can actually kill you!).




Reading and reading about Marie Curie and Albert Einstein inevitably led me to a further quest, the other Nobel prize laureates. And very often, almost always, what touched me most was actually reading about the stories of their lives. The lives behind the researches and the discovery of knowledge of the universe, the lives behind the efforts to make this world a better place for mankind to live.

All these stories, are all remarkable. Sometimes, when I finished reading the stories, all I could do was thanking God and the universe that the world is blessed with such wonderful people who dedicated their lives to science and humanity.

These Nobel laureates are only a small percentage of the actual number of scientists and humanitarians in this world, I could only smile imagining how long my list of people to be grateful to would be :-)

Link: www.nobelprize.org