President Donald Trump won't be meeting with the American Nobel Prize laureates this year, Stat News reports.
For the past 20 years, US recipients of the Nobel prizes have generally been greeted in person by the president, it notes. For instance, Stat News says President Barack Obama met with winners each year except 2009, when he himself was awarded a Nobel, and President George W. Bush met with the laureates each year he was in office except for in 2006, when Vice President Dick Cheney did.
Fortune adds that the White House has cited conflicts with Trump's Asia trip as the reason for not holding the ceremony.
Stat News reports that some Nobel laureates are fine with the deviation from tradition.
"I will not put my foot into the White House as long as Trump, Pence, or Ryan (i.e., the possible succession of impeachments) will occupy it," Joachim Frank, one of this year's Nobel laureates in chemistry, tells Stat News in an email. "I cannot speak for the others; don't know them personally yet, but I strongly believe that as thinking intelligent people they will have a similar attitude as I."