The Nobel Prize is the most famous and prestigious international award in the world. Every year, it honors those who bring revolutionary inventions, groundbreaking research, or remarkable cultural achievements to humanity.
But behind the formal ceremonies and solemn speeches, the history of the Nobel Prize is filled with curious, humorous, and even mysterious stories. Over the years, six laureates have refused their awards — and that’s just one of many surprises. AdmiGram.com has gathered the most interesting and little-known facts from the history of the Nobel Prize.
Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About the Nobel Prize
- Believe it or not: The two most common birthdays among Nobel laureates are February 28 and May 21.
- Laureates are strictly forbidden from improvising during their acceptance speeches. According to Randy Schekman, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine, recipients must submit their speech text to the Nobel Committee at least 24 hours before the ceremony.
- Brian Schmidt, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, was once arrested at an airport. Security suspected he was smuggling antiques — it turned out to be his Nobel medal.
- Leon Lederman, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, sold his medal for $765,000 to pay for medical treatment. Only two Nobel medals have ever been sold by their living recipients — both in 2014.
- When Niels Bohr received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, the Carlsberg Brewery gifted him a house next to the brewery — connected by a direct beer pipeline. Bohr could enjoy free draft beer anytime he wished.
- Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun once had his wallet and Nobel Prize check stolen in an elevator. A few days later, the thieves returned everything untouched.
- Americans dominate the Nobel Prizes in science — 43% of all awards in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine have gone to U.S. citizens. Germans come second, followed by the British.
- At least two Nobel laureates — Kary Mullis and Francis Crick — were reportedly under the influence of psychedelic substances when they made their discoveries.
- Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel laureate in Literature (1913), planned to bring a goat with him to Stockholm because he could only drink freshly milked goat’s milk in the morning.
- George Bernard Shaw is the only person ever to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar — the latter for his screenplay of Pygmalion in 1938.
- Werner Forssmann, a pioneer in cardiac catheterization, tested the procedure on himself after it was banned on patients — and was fired for it. Twenty-seven years later, he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
- Roughly 20% of all Nobel laureates are Jewish or have Jewish ancestry.
- Since 1974, the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously. Before that, it happened only twice: to Erik Karlfeldt (Literature, 1931) and Dag Hammarskjöld (Peace, 1961). The rule was broken once — in 2011 — when Ralph Steinman, winner in Physiology or Medicine, died just hours before the announcement.
- In 1908, physicist Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His reaction became legendary: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” Later, he quipped that the most unexpected transformation he’d ever witnessed was his own — “from a physicist into a chemist.”
- The only person to win both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel Prize is Dutch physicist Andre Geim. In 2000, he received the Ig Nobel for levitating frogs in a magnetic field; in 2010, he won the real Nobel for his work on graphene.
- In 1939, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his “peaceful” division of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement — a move initially supported by some European politicians. By May that year, the nomination was withdrawn, and no Peace Prize was awarded.
- In 1933, physicist Paul Dirac wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize because he hated publicity. Ernest Rutherford convinced him to accept it — pointing out that the refusal would bring him even more attention.
- When President John F. Kennedy invited William Faulkner to a White House dinner honoring Nobel laureates, Faulkner declined: “Tell them I’m too old to travel that far for dinner with strangers.”
- During Nazi rule, German scientists were forbidden from accepting the Nobel Prize. As a result, chemists Richard Kuhn and Adolf Butenandt (1938–39) and physician Gerhard Domagk were forced to decline their awards. After World War II, they finally received their diplomas and medals — but not the prize money.
image on top: Solis Invicti / Flickr
