Copenhagen, 23 October 2008 – The winner of the 2008 Søgaard Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Neuroscience, Professor Vidor Kiraly OBE, of Cambridge University, United Kingdom, was taken to hospital yesterday following an incident at the awards ceremony at Rosenborg Castle. Honoured for his pioneering work on sensory integration and pattern recognition in the human brain, Kiraly was in the Danish capital to accept the prestigious award from his Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Denmark. According to eyewitnesses, Kiraly displayed signs of agitation during his acceptance speech and began to shout in a foreign language at a man at the back of the hall. Before anyone could stop him, Kiraly rushed off the stage and knocked the man to the floor. Though Kiraly was largely incoherent at the time of the attack, a member of the audience identified two of the words he shouted as ‘monster’ and ‘dead’. Medics arrived promptly on the scene and administered a sedative before transporting Kiraly to a local hospital. The man who was attacked appeared to be seriously injured and was taken away by ambulance. No further information on the victim’s condition, or Professor Kiraly’s whereabouts, is available at this time.

Gessen clicked on other links about the incident, including a video taken during the ceremony. The video started mid-sentence, as an elegant man announced Professor Kiraly’s name. Clad in a grey suit with an expensive sheen, Kiraly mounted the stage, his eyes shadowed, and his dark hair, touched with silver at the temples, swept back. A gold signet ring on his left hand caught the light.

The Crown Prince of Denmark, resplendent in full dress uniform, strode forth and presented Kiraly with a medal and a brass plaque. Polite applause, a burst of flashbulbs. Kiraly flinched at the lights as he stepped up to the dais and leaned into the microphone, thanking the committee and his Danish hosts, noting how pleased he was to be back in the Danish capital, home to his favourite philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. He said a few words in what Gessen took to be Danish, eliciting from the audience – and the Prince – a ripple of laughter.

Two minutes into his prepared speech, beaded with perspiration, Kiraly paused to look at the audience. As the blood drained from his face, followed by a flush of anger, he raised his fist in the air and shouted something Gessen couldn’t make out, before rushing down the steps and into the aisle. The camera panned jerkily to a man at the back of the hall, elegant in a pin-striped suit and horn-rimmed glasses, his leonine head adorned with a white mane of hair. Kiraly raced down the aisle and launched himself at the man, shouting something in a language Gessen assumed was Hungarian.