Rewards and Satisfactions 149 



visiting lectureships. Foreign countries have all these and 

 special government orders of merit as well. The ceremonials 

 attached to these awards vary in duration and complexity, 

 but some of them, especially in foreign countries, may 

 extend for days and provide the recipient with a personal 

 experience of the pomp and adulation which used to sur- 

 round the lives of hereditary nobility and military heroes. 

 The top event of this character is, of course, the awarding 

 of Nobel Prizes in Stockholm each December. This coin- 

 cides with a traditional Swedish festival, one part of which 

 involves beautiful girls with candlelit crowns who bring 

 breakfast in bed to distinguished citizens, a group which 

 includes the season's crop of Nobel Laureates. 



Although it is difficult to get inside of people sufficiently 

 to know their motivations, it seems unlikely that any very 

 large proportion of scientists chose their careers or did their 

 work primarily in pursuit of a gold medal or a Nobel Prize. 

 Certainly, these tokens are nice to have, but the basic 

 rewards and satisfactions of the scientist are still found, I 

 think, in the pleasure of satisfying one's own curiosity, the 

 delight in mastering the necessary observational skills, and 

 the satisfaction of working as part of a community of 

 scholars. 



