For me this chair is still empty and waiting and inviting millions of left out children,” wrote Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi under a chair at the Nobel Museum here, thus keeping with the tradition of a unique kind of autograph given by the laureates.
The Nobel chairs are not only museum artefacts but also a guest book of sorts cataloguing the signatures of all the Nobel laureates who paid a visit to the museum, says Tobias Degsell, curator at the Nobel Museum.
Otherwise, they are used by hundreds of visitors daily when they take their lunch or coffee at the Nobel Museum’s cafe Bistro. Satyarthi visited the museum on December 12. Though his co-winner Malala Yuosafzai did not visit the museum, she has donated a dress of hers which has been put on display.
The museum has over 230 such signatures. Famous signatories include US President Barack Obama, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai lama, economist John Nash and DNA-discoverer James Watson. Apart from Satyarthi’s autograph, another item on display at the museum related to India is a bicycle of Amartya Sen, who won the Economics Nobel in 1998.
“Bicycles are not the most common tools in economic science, but Amartya Sen’s bicycle played a significant role in his research,” Degsell told PTI. A large part of Sen’s work was concerned with the conditions of the most impoverished members of society and how these can be improved.