Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Greatest Nobel Prize Snubs

Starting point is 00:00:00 As of the recording of this podcast episode, 1,012 people have been awarded the Nobel Prize across every category. And this episode is not about any of them. This episode is about the people who didn't win a Nobel Prize, but arguably should have. Whether they were the victims of personal petty politics, geopolitics, or sexism, there have been many people who were deserving of Nobel Prizes who never got one.

Starting point is 00:00:26 Learn more about the greatest Nobel Prize snubs in history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

Starting point is 00:01:08 The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious prize in the world. It's awarded for excellence in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics. To be sure, if you are a Nobel laureate, you're probably a very accomplished individual. However, the awarding of a Nobel Prize is ultimately a human endeavor. Humans nominate and vote to determine who gets the prize. As such, it is an inherently flawed process. Even if they honor the right people, they can still overlook people who were deserving of a prize. In this episode, I want to focus on some of the most,

Starting point is 00:01:45 noteworthy people who were not awarded a Nobel Prize. These were individuals who could have won a prize and arguably should have won a prize, but didn't. Before I get into the details, let me say up front that this is a highly subjective list. There's no right answer to this question. Different people can come up with different lists, but I also think that other lists would have a high degree of overlap with my list. Also, there are rules on how and why Nobel Prizes are awarded. For First, Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, meaning if someone dies before the Nobel Prize Committee votes, they would be ineligible to receive the award. Second, scientists who develop theories, even if those theories are correct and revolutionized

Starting point is 00:02:31 science, can't be awarded a prize until that theory has been proven. And sometimes that can take a very long time. Let me give two examples of each of these caveats. The first would be Rosalind Franklin. Hazelan Franklin was definitely worthy of a Nobel Prize for her critical contribution to the discovery of DNA's double helix structure, one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Her pioneering work in X-ray crystallography produced the now famous Photograph 51, which provided essential evidence of DNA's helical form. Without her meticulous experimental technique and interpretation of diffraction patterns, James Watson and Francis Crick might not have been able to construct their accurate. model of DNA. Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 for their work

Starting point is 00:03:22 in determining the helic structure of the DNA molecule. Rosal and Franklin was not given the award. However, the reason why she wasn't awarded a Nobel Prize was very straightforward. She had died in 1958 at the age of 37 from cancer. When the prize was awarded in 1962, she was unable to be recognized by the Nobel Committee for this reason. She was, most certainly, worthy of a prize, and had she been alive, she should have been awarded a share of the 1962 award. However, given the rules of the Nobel Prize, she couldn't receive a posthumous award. The other example would be Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking never won a Nobel Prize. Hawking was a theoretical physicist whose most important work involved black holes.

Starting point is 00:04:07 At the time of his death, his theories couldn't be proven, which is why he was never awarded a Nobel Prize. Since his death, we've learned much more about black holes from instruments such as the James Webb Telescope, which have confirmed some of his theories, but they took place after his death. So in the case of both Stephen Hawking and Rosalind Franklin, while both are deserving of a Nobel Prize, neither of which should technically be considered snubs. So who should have won a Nobel Prize, but didn't? Let's start with the most subjective category, literature. Literature has historically been the most controversial category, and there are many different authors who write in many different languages that the Nobel Prize Committee tries to recognize.

Starting point is 00:04:52 However, there have been some notable omissions. The most glaring is probably Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy would be worthy of a Nobel Prize in Literature for his monumental contributions to the world of literature, particularly through works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina. However, Tolstoy was never awarded the Nobel Prize, likely due to a combination of political and ideological reasons. His later life embrace of radical pacifism, anarchism, and criticism of organized religion in the state put him at odds with the more conservative leanings of the Swedish Academy at the time.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Despite multiple nominations, the committee consistently passed him over. Another massive literature snub was Mark Twain. Twain would be worthy of a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking contributions to American literature and his enduring influence on global storytelling. With works like Huckleberry Finn, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Prince and the Popper, Twain captured the complexities of American society with wit and satire. But despite his literary significance, Twain was never awarded the Nobel Prize, likely due to the European-centric biases of the Nobel Committee in the early 20th century, and a general underappreciation of American literature at that period.

Starting point is 00:06:05 James Joyce was also never awarded a Nobel Prize. He revolutionized modern literature with Ulysses in Finnegan's wake, yet he was snubbed because his work was considered too experimental and possibly too controversial. Virginia Woolf was also never awarded a Nobel Prize. She was overlooked due to sexism and her avant-garde style. In addition, several notable modern writers have never won a Nobel Prize, including Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, Jorge Louise Borges, Thomas Pinchon, and Cormac McCarthy. The category of peace is also highly subjective, so I'm only going to focus on the most glaring

Starting point is 00:06:43 omission in the history of the prize, Mohandis Gandhi. Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize, despite being nominated five different times and has widely been regarded as one of the greatest champions of nonviolent resistance in history. His leadership in India's struggle for independence through peaceful civil disobedience inspired global movements for civil rights and justice. However, several factors likely contributed to the Nobel Committee's repeated snubs. During Gandhi's lifetime, the Committee may have viewed his actions as too politically entangled, especially amidst the turbulence of British colonial rule and the partition of India. Additionally, some members questioned whether his efforts had actually led to peace,

Starting point is 00:07:24 given the violence surrounding the partition of India and Pakistan. By all accounts, he probably would have been awarded the prize in 1948. Unfortunately, he was assassinated on January 30th, just days before nominations closed. No Peace Prize was awarded in 1948. Instead, the Nobel Committee simply said, quote, there was no suitable living candidate, an acknowledgement of Gandhi's death. In 2016, the Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, quote, The greatest omission in our 106-year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received

Starting point is 00:08:03 the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi could have done without the Nobel Peace Prize, but whether the Nobel Committee can do without Gandhi is the question. End quote. There have been many oversights in the sciences as well. One of the biggest was Dmitri Mendelove. You might remember him as the guy who created the periodic table of the elements. Despite his groundbreaking achievement, Mendelov was never awarded the Nobel Prize. In 1905, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and in 1906, he came one vote away from winning. But internal agreements on the Nobel Committee, particularly opposition from Svant Arenas, a powerful figure in the scientific community, led to the award going to someone else. Mendel have died in 1907 at the age of 72.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Perhaps the most egregious oversight by the Nobel Committee in the history of the science prizes was that of Lisa Maitner. Lisa Maitner made pivotal contributions to nuclear physics, most notably, as a key figure in the discovery of nuclear fission, that process by which an atomic nucleus splits into smaller parts, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Working with chemist Otto Hahn, Maitner helped interpret the results of experiments that ultimately demonstrated fission,

Starting point is 00:09:18 and it was she and her nephew Otto Frisch, who provided the theoretical explanation for the phenomenon in 1938. Her insight laid the groundwork for both nuclear energy and indirectly the development of atomic weapons. However, in 1944, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded solely to Han, overlooking Maitner's essential role. Several factors likely contributed to this injustice, sexism in the scientific community, and the fact that Maitner was forced to flee Nazi Germany due to her Jewish heritage

Starting point is 00:09:49 and possible politics within the Nobel Committee. The prize was given in the middle of the war when Norway was occupied by Germany, and Sweden, while neutral, didn't want to antagonize Germany. Although she received numerous honors later in her life, the Nobel Committee's failure to recognize her remains one of its most widely acknowledged and criticized oversights. Another major oversight was that of Jocelyn Bell Brunel. Jocelyn Bell Brunel made a landmark discovery in astrophysics when, as a graduate student in 1967, she detected the first radio signals from a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits beams of radiation. While working on a radio telescope project at the University of Cambridge, she noticed a strange regular signal that her supervisor initially dismissed.

Starting point is 00:10:39 Her persistence led to the identification of a new type of astronomical object. In 1974, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for this discovery, but only to her graduate advisor, Anthony Hewish, and another physicist, Martin Ryle. Her exclusion sparked widespread criticism and remains a prominent example of how women's contributions have often been overlooked, as well as those of graduate students who do much of the actual work. Again, although she later received many honors and handled the snub with remarkable grace, her omission from the Nobel Prize remains one of the most debated decisions in the prize's history. Another massive oversight is that of Ralph Elfer and Robert Herman.

Starting point is 00:11:23 The 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation. While their detection in 1964 was indeed groundbreaking, they discovered it totally by accident and weren't even looking for it. Elfer and Herman were two theoretical physicists who had predicted the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation nearly two decades earlier in 1948. They not only proposed the concept as part of their work on Big Bang nucleosynthesis, but also estimated the cosmic microwave background radiation

Starting point is 00:11:59 temperature with remarkable accuracy. Many in the scientific community felt that Elfer and Herman's foundational theoretical work was just as deserving of recognition, if not more so, as the accidental observational discovery. However, the Nobel Committee traditionally favors experimental discoveries over theoretical predictions, and since the prize cannot be split among more than three recipients, Elfer and Herman were left out. Their exclusion is often viewed as a major oversight, especially since their work

Starting point is 00:12:29 helped shape the modern Big Bang theory. The list of Nobel snubs that I've provided is by no means exhaustive. There are many more people who have done work that is worthy of a Nobel Prize but have never received it. Satyendra Nath-Bose contributed to the Bose-Einstein Consensate Theory. Jonas Salk, who created the first polio vaccine, Fritz Zawicki, whose theoretical ideas in astrophysics were decades ahead of his time. Gilbert Lewis, who discovered the covalent bonds in chemistry and was nominated for the prize 41 times but never won due to personal animosity with people on the committee. And Vera Rubin, who studied the rotation curves of galaxies and found that stars at the edges

Starting point is 00:13:12 were moving just as fast as those near the center, which is why we think there's dark matter in the universe. Ultimately, the Nobel Prize is awarded to humans, by humans, who are subject to all the biases and failures that humans have. As such, the Nobel Prize is inherently imperfect. Some prizes have been awarded when maybe they shouldn't have been, and some were never awarded to some of the most deserving people in the world. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Oaken and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Nelley Malvine over on Spotify. They write,

Starting point is 00:13:53 After two years of catching up, this is my first episode that I listened to on the day came out. I've gained so much from this podcast. I can't wait for my kindergarten-aged brothers to learn English well enough for them to understand this podcast. They have a passion for this kind of stuff. For now, I am retelling them the best parts in Latvian whenever I see them. Thank you for this experience. Well, thank you, Nelly. It's nice to hear that the Latvians are representing. I very much enjoyed my time visiting Riga. Hopefully, we can get some listeners from other Baltic republics to check in as well. Estonia and Lithuania can't let Latvia get too far ahead. Remember, if you leave a review or semi-a-bustagram, you two can have it right on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Greatest Nobel Prize Snubs

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