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See this year's Nobel Prize-winning scientists swig bubbly and get cheered at work

Carolyn Bertozzi celebrates winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday at Stanford University in California.
Angel Kuo
/
Screenshot by NPR
Carolyn Bertozzi celebrates winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday at Stanford University in California.

Updated October 6, 2022 at 3:54 PM ET

What do you do when you (or a colleague) wins a Nobel Prize for your scientific research? Party!

As the prizes have been handed out this week, the winners have been greeted by cheering crowds at their research institutions.

Here's Svante Paabo, this year's honoree in physiology or medicine for his genetic research into human evolution, showing up for work the next day and being greeted by a cheering throng:

Paabo's colleagues didn't stop there. He also got tossed into the Max Planck Institute's pond for good measure.

Chemistry prize winner Carolyn Bertozzi — recognized alongside Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal for their work on "click chemistry," processes that mimic nature to quickly and reliably produce desired substances — partied a little more heartily, popping some bubbly and downing a swig from the bottle.

It was appropriate for someone who's been a rock star in more than a scientific field. She was congratulated on Twitter by former college bandmate Tom Morello, who went on to become one of rock's greatest guitarists in Rage Against the Machine.

Bertozzi's co-winner Meldal got in on the fun too, getting a big ovation at the University of Copenhagen.

No word yet on what the winners of the Nobel Prize for physics got up to, but here's hoping that quantum information experts Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger each receive a free pass to get smashed at the particle accelerator of their choosing.

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