Bob Dylan Blows Off White House Celebration of Nobel Winners
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — President Barack Obama met with four of the recent American Nobel Prize laureates, including two Jews, but Bob Dylan did not make an appearance.
The winners of the award — physics laureates Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, economics sciences laureate Oliver Hart and chemistry laureate Fraser Stoddart — visited the White House Wednesday. All four men were born in Britain but live and work in the United States.
Kosterlitz, of Brown University, is the son of German Jews who escaped the Nazis. Hart, of Harvard University, is descended from a prominent London Jewish family; his great-grandfather, an Orthodox Jew named Samuel Montagu, who was a member of the House of Commons for 15 years.
The Swedish Academy announced last month that singer-songwriter Dylan, awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, would not attend the Dec. 10 award ceremony in Stockholm due to “pre-existing commitments.” The academy noted that Dylan is required to present a Nobel lecture to receive the $927,740 prize.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
