Donald Trump to break with tradition and not meet Nobel Prize winners

At least one laureate is 'relieved' not to have to turn down a White House invitation

US President Donald Trump will not be meeting with American Nobel laureates in a break with tradition. (Erik De Castro/AFP/Getty)

US President Donald Trump is breaking precedent once again by not meeting with America's Nobel prize winners.

The eight US laureates have not been scheduled to see Mr Trump ahead of their December trip to Sweden to receive their awards.

However, not all of them are disappointed at the prospect of missing out on the Oval office greeting.

Joachim Frank, awarded the Nobel in chemistry for work in microscopy, told Stat News that he “will not put my foot into the White House as long as Trump, Pence...occupy it.”

He also included House Speaker Paul Ryan on that list in case he ends up in the White House as a result of the “possible succession of impeachments".

Mr Frank, who said he was "relieved" at not having to turn down an invitation, noted that he does not speak for all the US winners, but said: “I strongly believe that as thinking intelligent people they will have a similar attitude as I.”

The other Americans include: physicists Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne, geneticists Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W Young, and economist Richard Thaler.

Previous presidents have been meeting with American prize winners almost every year since 2001.

Former President Barack Obama met with laureates every year except in 2009, his first year in office, when he himself was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Former President George W Bush also met with winners every year except 2006, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney greeted them.

According to Stat News, the White House cited the President’s travel schedule as the reason. Mr Trump is set to return on Tuesday from a 12-day Asia tour.

In his place, the White House’s Office of Technology Policy’s Michael Kratsios will attend the Swedish Embassy’s Nobel prize reception on behalf of the administration.

The office still does have an appointed director, but does include 40 staff members and Mr Kratsios is a Trump political appointee.

The Director of the National Science Foundation, France Cordova, will also be in attendance at the event once again.

Mr Trump may not want to deal with the political platform often used by laureates when given an audience with the President.

The administration has plans to cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health to research rare diseases, for example.

Mr Trump has also left the position of the nation’s top science advisor - a fixture since the administration of Dwight D Eisenhower - open for longer than any predecessor, according to the Washington Post.

His nominee for the top scientist at the US Department of Agriculture, Sam Clovis, is a noted skeptic on climate change and has no formal scientific research background.

Mr Obama, John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton all named science advisors prior to taking office. Mr Bush waited three months.

The Trump administration may also not hold the annual White House Science Fair.