GACA Collection 225. Anderson, Reynold and Sylvia. Nobel Prize Ceremony Trip Collection, 1963-1964: Overview

To learn more about this collection please see the finding aid link found above, and/or visit the College and Lutheran Church Archives to use these primary sources.

Anderson, Reynold and Sylvia.  Nobel Prize Ceremony Trip Collection, 1963-1964.  GACA Collection 225.  2 folders.

ABSTRACT:
The Nobel Prize Ceremony Trip collection consists of two folders, holding various collected materials documenting a junket by Reynold Anderson and Sylvia, his wife, to the 1963 Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden..  The first folder includes an expansive assortment of items such as: newspaper articles, correspondence, trip itinerary, event invitations, plane tickets, a map of Stockholm, seating charts, hotel information, and related memorabilia.  The second folder consists of approximately sixty photographs of the ceremony.  All materials were originally in a scrapbook.

Reynold Anderson, Gustavus Adolphus College alumnus and the school’s Director of Public Relations (1944-1963), went with his wife Sylvia to Stockholm Sweden in 1963 for the Nobel Prize Ceremony as College representatives. This invitation seems to emanate from the completion of the Nobel Hall of Science at Gustavus in 1963.  According to a Nobel Conference program:

 “As the College prepared to build a new science hall in the early 1960s, College officials asked the Nobel Foundation for permission to name the building the Alfred Nobel Hall of Science as a memorial to the great Swedish inventor and philanthropist.  Permission was granted, and the facility’s dedication ceremony in 1963 included officials from the Nobel Foundation as well as 26 Nobel laureates.

Following the 1963 Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm, College representatives met with Nobel Foundation officials, asking them to endorse an annual science conference at the College and to allow use of the Nobel name to establish credibility and high standards.  At the urging of several prominent Nobel laureates, the foundation granted the request, and the first conference was held at the College in January 1965.”