World - Bucknell University

World’s End
40 BUCKNELL WORLD • September 2006
An Evening in
Stockholm
JOHN G. CARLSON ’73
My sister sat next to the king,
and my wife looked like a queen. Reality
felt surreal — our family attending the
Nobel Prize festivities in Stockholm.
Last October, an early morning phone call from
Sweden alerted my brother-in-law Richard Schrock that
he had been selected to receive the 2005 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry. In the excitement that ensued, I could hardly
imagine the celebrations to follow two months later, in
December 2005, let alone think of our family in attendance.
After waking up to the news, I merely watched
Richard and his wife, my sister Nancy, grace the television
and newspapers, receiving a great deal of media
attention in our academically oriented community of
Greater Boston.
Richard, Frederick G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry
at MIT, shared the award for his work in developing the
metathesis method of organic synthesis. In simple terms,
he made molecules change partners as they danced —
an action replicated by professional dancers at the beginning
of Stockholm’s Nobel Week to explain the scientific
process to guests through more visual descriptions.
As we prepared for a Scandinavian winter and Nobel
festivities, I realized it was the first time all five of the
Carlson siblings had spent an extended period of time
together since we were children. Though we gather
frequently as a family, we could never have imagined
more auspicious circumstances and how much fun we
would have together in the land of our heritage.
I knew Mom and Dad watched over us with pride,
as my sister Nancy and her husband, Richard, now a
Nobel laureate, were feted by the Nobel Committees of
the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, an assembly of
previous recipients, academics, diplomats, the Swedish
people, and what our guide told us were 200 million
observers watching the ceremonies worldwide.
While we clearly recognized the scale of Richard’s
successes and achievements, I didn’t fully appreciate
their magnitude until our first day in Stockholm when
we walked into the front hall of the Nobel Museum and
saw Richard’s photo on an exhibit underlain with an
account of his accomplishments. It was then it finally hit
that he was in the company of the likes of Marie Curie
and Albert Einstein.
John G. ’73, Nuala, and Sean Carlson
As someone who has operated for 30 years in
businesses, I saw parallels in successes. Nobel Prize
winners take being academics to another level; they are
part researchers, part intellectual-property creators, part
team leaders, part fundraisers, part authors, part
entrepreneurs, and part marketing experts. The processes
employed by each winner seemed to exceed those used
by even the most successful companies.
But the academic discussions had their place, and
Nobel Week involved wonderful food and drink and
entertainment with the other “Nobel families” and
among our own Carlson family — well-received, partly
on account of our Swedish surname. As our father’s
parents had emigrated from there, we met our Swedish
relatives who reveled in their celebrity by affiliation.
The awards night itself was most inspiring. As my
wife, Nuala, and I were seated in the front rows from the
stage, we watched with my brothers and sisters as
Richard accepted his Nobel Prize from the hands of
Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, bowed to his fellow
laureates and then to the audience, most directly to his
wife, my sister.
The beauty of the moment segued into the best
party of my life, a black-tie affair from banquet to gala
ball, with exquisite singing, dancing with my beautiful
wife, sipping fine wines, and dining on carved slivers of
reindeer meat, though somehow my Swedish blood
could not recalibrate to its ethnic roots when it came to
some of the food choices. Richard escorted the 23-yearold
Princess Madeleine, and their photos adorned the
pages of Sweden’s tabloids the following morning. Not
surprisingly, Richard’s achievements took a distant
second place to more important details, such as the
princess’s dress choice.
On our last morning, we gathered in the lobby of
our five-star Grand Hotel, which claims the Dalai
Lama, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, and
Nelson Mandela among its previous guests. Our family
enjoyed one last brunch together, and we each tried to
put in perspective the experiences of our time in
Stockholm. All that came to my mind was that we had
been living a dream.
When I met Richard at Logan Airport in Boston one
week later, on his return from Sweden, he greeted me in
jest: “Hi John. Where’s my chauffeur?”
“Richard,” I said, “it’s time to get back to reality.”
John G. Carlson lives in Andover, Mass., and is CEO of System
Change, Inc., a management consulting firm.