Theodore Roosevelt Park

AMERICAN 2020 NOBEL LAUREATES HONORED ON NYC PARKS MONUMENT

NYC Parks Acting Commissioner Margaret Nelson today joined Camilla Mellander, Consul General of Sweden in New York, Heidi Olufsen, Consul General of Norway in New York, and 2020 Nobel Prize recipient Dr. Harvey J. Alter to unveil eight new inscriptions to the Nobel Monument at Theodore Roosevelt Park.

“The Nobel Monument continues to serve as a record of intellectual achievement and a living tribute to our country’s pursuit of knowledge and efforts to advance humanity,” said Commissioner Nelson. “We congratulate Dr. Alter and all 2020 Laureates for their remarkable accomplishments—from the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus to the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy—and we thank the Consulate for their ongoing partnership to honor these great Americans.”

The American Nobel Laureates of 2020 are: Andrea Ghez (Physics); Jennifer A Doudna (Chemistry); Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice (Medicine), Louise Glück (Literature); and Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson (Economics). All of their names have been inscribed on the granite monument, along with the award that they received.

The Nobel Monument was erected in 2003 as a joint initiative of the Consulate General of Sweden and NYC Parks with the purpose of honoring American Nobel Laureates, as well as the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel. The pink granite obelisk designed by Swedish sculptor Sivert Lindblom with a bronze relief portrait of Nobel by A. Lindberg was placed in the park named after President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States’ first recipient of the Nobel Prize.

“The Nobel Prize is one of Sweden’s greatest contributions to the global community. It has served to elevate the status of science, the work of scientists, and intellectual achievements all over the world. We congratulate the American Laureates of 2020 and we thank New York City Parks for this wonderful collaboration,” said Camilla Mellander, Consul General of Sweden in New York.

No other country has been home to as many Nobel Prize recipients as the United States. Since the prize was first presented in 1901, hundreds of Americans have attained universal recognition for their achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, and literature, and for their efforts to achieve world peace, and their names have been inscribed on this monument.

About Dr. Harvey J. Alter
Harvey J. Alter, M.D., is the 2020 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He earned his medical degree at the University of Rochester Medical School and trained in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital and at the University Hospitals of Seattle. In 2002, he became the first Clinical Center scientist elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and in that same year he was elected to the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Alter is a Senior Scholar at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center's Department of Transfusion Medicine.

The 2020 Nobel was awarded jointly to Alter, Michael Houghton, Ph.D., and Charles M. Rice, Ph.D., for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.