The Icing Sugar Inventor

Last year at the Nobel banquet I sat next to the woman who would later become my wife. She told me she had invented a new type of icing sugar. With great animation she described the chemical composition that guaranteed both powderiness and robustness. She arranged the cutlery into a tower to visualise the molecules. Only at dessert did she reveal she had been pulling my leg. Quite unabashed, she said it between two mouthfuls. In fact, she had taken her place at the table thanks to her ex-husband the neuroscientist. They were divorced, but he had dreaded going to Stockholm alone. And you don’t turn down an invitation, she said. No, you don’t, I said.