‘Want to make Goa home to gen next of Nobel laureates’

PANAJI: Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar said here on Thursday that the government will design and support various activities that would make Goa “home to the next generation of Nobel laureates”.

Parrikar was addressing the Nobel Prize Series, a three-day programme in the state that began on Thursday afternoon. The series is organised by Nobel Foundation, Sweden.

The chief minister inaugurated the series by launching an exhibition — The Nobel Prize: Ideas Changing the World — at the Kala Academy here on Thursday afternoon. The exhibition will continue for a month.

“We would like to continue our engagement with the esteemed Nobel laureates and I propose to the Nobel Foundation that we set up an annual Goa Nobel Lecture series that my government will be very happy to support and organise,” the chief minister said.

“We want to make Goa the home to the next generation of Nobel laureates,” he added.

Parrikar said the state government seeks to “reinforce Goa’s stature as a scientific hub of India” with a strong focus on not only significantly strengthening scientific education in the state, but also promoting a scientific temperament across the state.

“To this effect, we are set- PANAJI: Uk-based scientist Richard J Roberts, who won the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1993, criticised the “anti-gmo people” on Thursday and said politicians should listen to the scientists and not the anti-science people, who speak “nonsense” and “tell lies”.

He also said that he would “organise” support of Nobel laureates on the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO).

Roberts is here to participate in the three-day-long Nobel Prize Series organised by Nobel Media, a wing of Nobel Foundation, which bestows the coveted award.

“My aim in life is to con-

ting up two new education hubs in Goa,” he said.

Apart from Goa, programmes will be held in Mumbai and Delhi, and will include lectures, exhibitions and conferences.

A conference of teachers will be held at Kala University in Goa on Friday, while President Ram Nath Kovind will host a session at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on February 5.

“We are very pleased to be back in India for a new Nobel Prize Series. Last year the inter- vince politicians that science is important. They should listen to the scientists and not listen to the people who are anti-science, who are peoplewho speak lot of pseudo science,” Roberts told PTI.

“At the moment, one of the things that is important is Gmo...these are the future of agriculture,” he said.

“There is so much nonsense spoken by anti-gmo people, by Greenpeace activists, it is not just true...most of what they say is not true. Yet, they are having a big effect on people and politics,” he said. est to participate and learn from Nobel Laureates was enormous,” said Mattias Fyrenius, chief executive officer (CEO) of Nobel Media. The last year’s edition had been held in Gujarat.

Serge Haroche, Nobel laureate in physics in 2012; Tomas Lindahl, who won the Nobel in chemistry in 2015, Richard J Roberts, Nobel laureate in medicine in 1993 and Christiane NüssleinVolhard, who won the Nobel in medicine in 1995 are participating in the Series.