7 Nobel Prize Scandals

Nobel controversies go all the way back to the prizes’ founder, Alfred Bernhard Nobel. As the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other explosives, Nobel did not have the best public image. In fact, when his brother died, a French newspaper confused him with Alfred and used the headline “The merchant of death is dead.” It then stated that Nobel “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” The premature obituary was possibly what motivated Nobel to create the namesake prizes in order to enhance his legacy.

By 2022 the various Nobel Prizes had been awarded to 960 people and 30 organizations. Of the winners, only 61 were women, leading some to claim that the prize committees overlook females. One of the perhaps best-known alleged slights concerned Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars in 1967 and later published a paper with her adviser, Antony Hewish. However, only Hewish and another colleague, Martin Ryle, were given the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for the discovery of pulsars.

The most-contentious Nobel Prize is arguably the one for peace. Many recipients draw criticism for purported unpeaceful behavior. Among the most-notable examples is Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat. In 1994 he shared the prize with Israelis Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for their work on the Oslo Accords, an integral part of the peace process between Palestine and Israel. However, many critics noted that while Arafat was head of Fatah, the PLO group engaged in acts of terrorism.

Who’s there? Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler who? Adolf Hitler who was nominated for a peace prize. Not laughing? Neither did most people when Hitler was put up for the prize in 1939. A Swedish legislator had nominated him as a joke, but no one found it amusing. Instead, it created an uproar, and the nomination was quickly withdrawn. However, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s nominations in 1945 and 1948 were made in all seriousness.

While most consider the Nobel Prize a major honor, two winners have voluntarily declined the award. Jean-Paul Sartre, who refused all official awards, did not accept the 1964 literature prize. In 1974 he was joined by Le Duc Tho, who, with Henry Kissinger, shared the peace prize for their work to end the Vietnam War. Tho, however, refused to accept it, saying that “peace has not yet been established.”

Hitler reappears on our list, this time for his dislike of Nobel Prizes. The awards earned his ire after German journalist Carl von Ossietzky, a vocal critic of Hitler, was given the 1935 peace prize. Hitler subsequently barred all Germans from accepting a Nobel Prize and created the German National Prize for Art and Science as an alternative. Although Richard Kuhn (1938, chemistry), Adolf Butenandt (1939, chemistry), and Gerhard Domagk (1939, physiology or medicine) were forced to decline their Nobel awards, the men later received their diplomas and medals.

In 2008 Harald zur Hausen received the prize for physiology or medicine for his discovery of the human papilloma virus (HPV) and its link to cervical cancer. The problem? AstraZeneca, which produced HPV vaccines, sponsored the Nobel Prize Web site. In addition, two members of the panel that selected zur Hausen had ties to AstraZeneca. Although no wrongdoing was ever uncovered, the perceived conflict of interest drew criticism.