AS an awards ceremony it had everything. There was sympathy for a Scottish Nobel Laureate scientist suffering from dementia who took to the stage to collect an award that should mark the pinnacle of his career. Instead, he is unlikely to recall the discovery that propelled him there.

There was controversy as the Colombian president accepted his Nobel Peace Prize and asked victims of the Western hemisphere’s longest-running war to stand to accept recognition for their role in the peace process.

Then there was controversy and sympathy as the Literature Laureate did not turn up and his proxy was overcome by nerves as she sang in front of an audience of 1,500.

A SCOTS-born professor who suffers from dementia yesterday received the Nobel Prize for Physics at a glittering ceremony in Stockholm, but David Thouless, at times, did not appear to know why he was there.

He won half the 8 million Krone (£748,000) prize, while Michael Kosterlitz, from Aberdeen, and Duncan Haldane, from London, shared the other half.

As the three recipients were introduced by Professor Thors Hans Hansson, from the Nobel committee for physics, Thouless, from Bearsden, Glasgow, was helped to his feet by an attendant and stood facing offstage as his colleagues looked towards the podium.

The attendant then had to lead the 82-year-old over to the lectern to be presented with his Nobel diploma and medal by King Carl Gustaf of Sweden. The trio briefly remained on stage before the attendant took Thouless by the arm and led him off.

According to the Nobel committee the trio’s “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions” and “phases of matter”, had opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange shapes. Their work was carried out decades ago, but Nobel prizes are often delayed to see if discoveries stand the test of time.

In the case of Thouless, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who holds dual UK/US nationality, he discovered that matter, when flattened into a thin film, can act in strange ways, a breakthrough for quantum physicists who can use it for quantum computing.

The prize is bitter-sweet for him though, as he may have no recollection of his discovery and is unlikely to be able to appreciate the award. In July, the professor was reported missing from his Seattle home and, although he was found within 24 hours, police had to issue an appeal as he had been suffering from severe memory loss.

Professor Ray Jones, who worked under Thouless at the University of Birmingham, said it was a tragic case. “I wonder if he will appreciate the prize to the same extent now. It is very sad that it has come so late because I know things have been getting very difficult with David,” he said. “It’s rather tragic that is has been left so long, but it’s maybe the story of David’s life. He was 40 before he was elected to the Royal Society and I think it should have happened a long time before. He was ferociously talented, and had a very deep insight into physics.”

Kosterlitz, 73, is a professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Born in Aberdeen, his father Hans was also a scientist who fled Germany during the Second World War, and went on to discover endorphins.

He had heard news of his win while in an underground car park in Helsinki, Finland. He said he was “a little bit dazzled”, and was “young and stupid” when he carried out his research.

Haldane said he was “a bit British, or phlegmatic, about these things, so I didn’t faint or anything” when given the news.

Earlier, in the Norwegian capital Oslo, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, saying it helped achieve the “impossible dream” of ending Colombia’s long civil war.

He described the award as a “gift from heaven” and dedicated it to all Colombians, particularly the 220,000 killed and eight million displaced in the longest-running conflict in the Western hemisphere.

Santos won the award for reaching an historic peace deal with leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), earlier this year. But Colombian voters rejected it in a shock referendum result in October, days before the Nobel Peace Prize announcement.

Many believed that ruled out Santos from winning this year's prize, but the Norwegian Nobel Committee “saw things differently”, said deputy chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen.

“In our view there was no time to lose,” she said in her presentation speech. “The peace process was in danger of collapsing and needed all the international support it could get.”

A revised deal was approved by Colombia's congress last week.

Several victims of the conflict attended the ceremony, including Ingrid Betancourt – who was held hostage by Farc for six years. Leyner Palacios, who lost 32 relatives including his parents and three brothers in a mortar attack, was also there. Santos said: “The Farc has asked for forgiveness for this atrocity, and Leyner, who is now a community leader, has forgiven them,” as Palacios stood up to applause from the crowd.

In a departure from his prepared speech and to more applause, Santos asked representatives of the victims present to stand and be recognised for their own efforts in the peace process. “I have served as a leader in times of war - to defend the freedom and the rights of the Colombian people - and I have served as a leader in times of making peace,” he said. “Allow me to tell you, from my own experience, that it is much harder to make peace than to wage war.”

In Stockholm, what started as a somewhat unconventional award ceremony continued in that vein when singer-songwriter Bob Dylan – did not turn up to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. His place was taken by American singer Patti Smith, who is most famous for her 1975 album, Horses, and the hit song Because the Night.

In a performance of Dylan classic A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, a nervous Smith never really looked comfortable and forgot the lyric “I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’”.

She then apologised quietly to the 1,500-strong audience – including members of the Swedish royal family – and asked if she could start that section of the song again. “I am so nervous,” she said, before carrying on to applause from the crowd.

Swedish literary historian Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel committee defended their choice of Dylan for the award, saying that when his songs were first heard in the 1960s, “all of a sudden much of the bookish poetry in our world felt anaemic”. The academy’s choice “seemed daring only beforehand and already seems obvious”.

Engdahl was expected to recite a poem composed by Dylan for the ceremony, at the official Nobel dinner last night.

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom won this award for their contributions to contract theory, a field of research applicable to anything from CEO bonuses to the deductibles and co-pays – or fixed payments – for insurance.

Holmstrom, who is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said he has “never received a bonus in my lifetime”, while Hart has been critical of Donald Trump’s plans to increase spending on infrastructure while cutting taxes, which he said would endanger public finances.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Edinburgh-born Sir James Fraser Stoddart, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Dutch scientist Bernard “Ben” Feringa were rewarded for their work on tiny molecular machines that scientists say can lead to new computer chips, batteries and energy storage systems.

Their ground-breaking work in developing molecular machinery has resulted in a toolbox of chemical structures which are used by researchers around the world to build increasingly advanced creations. One of the most striking examples is a molecular robot that can grasp and connect amino acids, the building block of protein.

Nobel Prize in Medicine

Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi for discoveries related to autophagy, the “self-eating” process that lets a cell break down and recycle some of its contents. Breakdowns in the autophagy process have been linked to a number of serious conditions including Parkinson’s, diabetes and cancer.

When he gave his Nobel lecture, Ohsumi spoke for the entire 50 minutes allocated, and said later: “I often give lectures in English, but I was pretty nervous. If I were grading myself it may have been about an 80. My wife, Mariko, said it was all right.”