The Swedish inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel said in his will that the Nobel Prize should be awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind during the last year”. The 1921 Nobel Prize was awarded to Albert Einstein to honour his contributions to theoretical physics in general and his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
Einstein and Nobel were two great minds whose legacies are as important today as ever. Albert Einstein had a strong connection to Switzerland, he studied in Aarau and Zürich, worked in Bern and was then a teacher at ETH in Zürich. His most important work is from his time in Switzerland and he kept his Swiss nationality his whole life.
Because of his innumerable contributions to science, Einstein is considered the father of modern physics, but he was also an accomplished violinist and loved music.
At the time Einstein received the Nobel Prize, a Russian engineer Lev Termen was laying the foundations of modern electronic music with his invention, the theremin. It was a technically advanced instrument based on conquests in the area of science. Einstein was very curious of the instrument, he attended one of his concerts and even tried to play it.
CERN and the Swedish Embassy in Bern collaborated to design an event to connect science and music. The unconventional music played by Henrik Rylander and Roland Bucher, a Swedish and Swiss artist respectively, together with CERN scientists will be an excellent way to celebrate Einstein's Nobel Prize anniversary.
