Page 376 - The Secret Museum

international peace. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi won it while under house arrest in

Burma. In her acceptance speech, which she gave when she was finally free in 2012,
she talked about how she felt when she had first been awarded it. At the time, she had
felt unreal, disconnected from the world, but ‘as the days and months went by, and
news of reactions to the award came on the airwaves, I began to understand the
significance of the Nobel Prize. It had made me real once again; it had drawn me
back into the wider human community.’

Olov’s favourite Nobel-winner’s story is that of is Pyotr Kapitsa, who won the
prize for physics in 1978. He was born in Russia, but in 1921 moved with his family

to Cambridge to work. He returned briefly to Moscow in 1934, invited as a special
guest of Stalin in recognition of his work; however, once he was there, Stalin would
not let him leave. He moved his family to Moscow, and set up a laboratory in the
city. Kapitsa was asked to work on the atom bomb. He refused and was sent, with his
family, to live in Siberia. He might have been awarded the Peace Prize for his
refusal, but his Nobel Prize was awarded for physics, for the research he worked on

in Cambridge before he was forced to live in Russia.
Olov explained that, of course, there have been controversial prize-winners:

‘Kissinger, Arafat spring to mind’. I wondered if any had been revoked? ‘No, the
Nobel Foundation can’t take any prizes back,’ he answered.

He has had the privilege of meeting several Nobel laureates. He met Aung San
Suu Kyi last year, and had tea with the Dalai Lama, right where he and I were sitting
in the museum café. ‘That was great,’ he said. ‘We sat surrounded by monks, chatting,
and the Dalai Lama laughed a lot.’