Stockholm, Sweden, at the Presentation of the Nobel Prizes, 10 December 2012. The speech of Dr. Solomon Meyerowski.

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with great regret that I must refuse the great honor that you have conferred upon me in this magnificent hall this evening. This year's prize in medicine, twelve million Swedish kroner, would go a long way toward funding the ongoing brain research that I have been doing and for which you have honored me tonight. But it is precisely that research that compels me to return this medal to you, and to ask the Nobel Prize Committee to retain the prize money and confer it upon someone they feel is worthy of it, if its members conclude, after my address, that they should continue to offer such prizes in the future. I fondly hope that henceforth they will no longer award them, and that the committee itself, and indeed the Foundation, will be disbanded and the funds from which the prizes are awarded will be liquidated. For if we believe in rational thought at all – and of course we do, or we would not be honoring its foremost exponents, then we must conclude that the awarding of such prizes is the height – or should I say, the depth – of irrational, unscientific behavior, and is a terrible example to set for new generations.