The Nobel Prize Decoded

"Nobel medal" by Design of the medal: The Nobel Foundation. Sculptor and engraver: Erik Lindberg (1902).

Source of this work Photographer: David Monniaux (2005, 2006, 2007)Edited by: hidro 21:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)Design of the medal: The Nobel Foundation. Sculptor and engraver: Erik Lindberg (1902).

Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nobel_medal.png#/media/File:Nobel_medal.png

I am a big fan of the Pawn Stars show aired on History TV channel and happened to witness an interesting (or rather shocking) question that was asked during one of their shows – Pawnography. The question under scanner is - Who amongst these famous personalities were NOT nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize:
1. Oskar Schindler
2. Benito Mussolini
3. Adolf Hitler
4. Yassar Arafat

In case you are a history buff who knows about these 4 personalities, then chances are that you will end up making a wrong guess to the above question. Barring Oskar Schindler (well-known industrialist during World War II who is credited with saving 1200 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust), the other personalities' history don't stand in good taste to be considered for a Nobel prize. While Hitler and Mussolini are well known for causing huge damage to human life during World War II, Arafat is considered a hero by the Palestinians but a terrorist by the Israelis. Ironically, the answer to the question is Oskar Schindler (I could understand your disbelief). But hold on, the surprise doesn’t end with this.

The biggest surprise is that the most likely deserving person for the Nobel Prize – Mahatma Gandhi never received the prize. Even though he was nominated five times for the award, he failed to bag the award even once. This strong advocator of Non-violence came close to winning the award in 1948 but was assassinated just two days before the nomination due date. Since the prize could be awarded only to a living person, the Mahatma’s nomination couldn’t be accepted. The Nobel committee even decided to go against the rules and confer the award to Gandhi but later decided to withhold the award and instead declared that there was no deserving living candidate for the award during that year. Joining the Mahatma on this list of Non-Nobel Laureates are some of the well-known figures on the planet such as Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Mark Twain, Neville Chamberlain, Clement Attlee, Ramsay MacDonald, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Charles Hughes, Jawaharlal Nehru, Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Edison.

The story behind the nomination of the least likely candidate for the award - Hitler is an interesting one indeed. A member of the Swedish parliament, E.G.C. Brandt nominated Adolf Hitler in 1939 with satirical intentions (to mock Hitler’s discrimination towards Jews) but had to withdraw the nomination after protests from other parliament members in Sweden. As I began scouring over the internet to find more information on the most valuable award on Earth, I stumbled upon these interesting historical facts: 

• An interesting statute about the award is that a candidate who dies after the nomination closing date still gets to receive the award. This has happened only thrice in Nobel Prize’s history, the latest being Ralph Steinman, who was awarded the prize three days before his death in 2012. 
• The wife of Robert Lucas, winner of 1995 Nobel Prize in Economics, had the forecasting brain of Nostradamus that she had introduced a clause in their divorce settlement 7 years ago by which she was entitled to receive 50 percent of her husband’s Nobel Prize. So the economist had to share his $1 million prize with his wife as per the settlement. Interestingly, the divorce clause expired on October 31, 1995 and so if he had won the award a year later, his wife would have received nothing. Well, someone rightly said - “wherever women are concerned, the unexpected always happens”. Seems to be right in this case.
• One of the terms of the award is that it cannot be given to more than 3 persons for a single field, irrespective of what the situation may be. The Nobel Prize has been given to 2 or 3 persons in a single field several times, whenever the selection committee found that the nominated works were equally meritorious.
• All the Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, except the Peace prize which is awarded on the same date and time in Norway. Until now, it remains a mystery as to why Alfred Nobel chose Norway to award the Peace prize.
• There were few instances wherein inventions that were awarded the Nobel Prize were later found to be wrong/ untrue. Johannes Fibiger in 1926 was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for his hypothesis about parasites causing cancer which was found later to be incorrect. A year later, Julius Wagner Von Jauregg won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on the discovery of a cure for Syphilis by injecting fever causing malaria. Antonio Moniz was awarded the Nobel prize in 1949 for Medicine for developing prefrontal lobotomy as a treatment for schizophrenia which was discontinued in the 1960s.
• Every year, Thomson Reuters, the largest information service provider company, publishes a list of candidates who are likely to win the Nobel Prize in their respective field based on the citation impact of their published research. Until now, the company has correctly predicted 37 Nobel prize winners since 2002.
• The well-known Yoga guru, Baba Ramdev recently claimed that he should have been awarded the Nobel prize for his work on Yoga but was denied because he is black. As expected, the controversial yogi received lot of flak for his controversial comments. 

Being a big fan of the Freakonomics book, I found this interesting podcast on “How to win a Nobel Prize: A New Freakonomics Radio Episode” in their blog. Do listen to this in case you would like to lay your hands on this coveted prize.

Even though this prestigious award’s history has been marred in controversy over the selection process and the past winners, we should accept the fact that the award has contributed enormously in improving the standard of research and development on the planet. As like the inscription found on the medal – Inventas Vitam juvat excoluisse per artes (translates as “And they who bettered life on earth by new found mastery”) and Pro pace et fraternitate gentium (translates as "for the peace and brotherhood of men"), this award has acknowledged some of the greatest inventions/ inventors which/who have made our life easy on Earth.