The Greatest Nobel Prize Snubs

Podcast Transcript

As of the recording of this episode, 1,012 people have been awarded Nobel Prizes across every category.

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.

Learn more about the greatest Nobel Prize snubs in history on this episode of Everything Everything Daily.

The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious prize in the world. It is awarded for excellence in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics.

To be sure, if you are a Nobel Laureate, you are 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 often overlook people who were deserving of a prize.

In this episode, I want to focus on some of the most noteworthy people who were not awarded a Nobel Prize. These were individuals who could have won a prize, arguably should have won a prize, but didn’t.

Before I get into the details, let me say upfront that this is a highly subjective list. There is 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. 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 revolutionize science, can’t be awarded a prize until that theory has been proven. Sometimes that can take a very long time.

Let me give two examples of each of these caveats.

The first would be Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind Franklin was definitely worthy of a Nobel Prize for her critical contributions 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 in Medicine in 1962 for their work in determining the helix structure of the DNA molecule. Rosalind Franklin was not given the award.

However, the reason why she wasn’t awarded a Nobel Prize was very straightforward. She 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 worth 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. At the time of his death, his theories couldn’t be proved, which is why he was never awarded a Nobel Prize. Since his death, we have 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.

However, there have been some notable omissions.

The most glaring is probably Leo Tolstoy.

Leo Tolstoy would be worthy of a Nobel Prize in Literature for his monumental contributions to world 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 and the state put him at odds with the more conservative leanings of the Swedish Academy at the time. Despite multiple nominations, the committee consistently passed him over.

Another massive snub was Mark Twain.

Mark 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 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Prince and the Pauper, Twain captured the complexities of American society with wit and satire

Despite his literary significance, Twain was never awarded the Nobel Prize, likely due to the European-centric biases of the Nobel committee at the time and a general underappreciation of American literature in the early 20th century.

James Joyce was also never awarded a Nobel Prize. He revolutionized modern literature with Ulysses and Finnegans 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 Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon, and Cormac McCarthy.

The category of Peace is also very subjective, so I’m only going to focus on the most glaring omission in the history of the prize: Mohandas Gandhi.

Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize despite being nominated five times and widely 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 led to actual peace, particularly given the violence surrounding partition.

By all accounts, he would have probably 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 “there was no suitable living candidate,” an acknowledgement of Gandhi’s death.

In 2006, the Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “The greatest omission in our 106-year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received 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.”

There have been many oversights in the sciences as well.

One of the biggest was Dmitri Mendeleev. You might remember him as the guy who created the periodic table of the elements.

Despite this groundbreaking achievement, Mendeleev 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 disagreements within the Nobel Committee—particularly opposition from Svante Arrhenius, a powerful figure in the scientific community—led to the award going to others.

Mendeleev died in 1907 at the age of 72.

Perhaps the most egregious oversight by the Nobel Committee in the history of the science prizes was that of Lise Meitner.

Lise Meitner made pivotal contributions to nuclear physics, most notably as a key figure in the discovery of nuclear fission—the process by which an atomic nucleus splits into smaller parts, releasing enormous energy. Working with chemist Otto Hahn, Meitner helped interpret the results of experiments that ultimately demonstrated fission, 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 Hahn, overlooking Meitner’s essential role.

Several factors likely contributed to this injustice: sexism in the scientific community, the fact that Meitner was forced to flee Nazi Germany due to her Jewish heritage, and possible politics within the Nobel Committee. This 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 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 Burnell.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell made a landmark discovery in astrophysics when, as a graduate student in 1967, she detected the first radio signals from a pulsar—rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit 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.

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, Antony 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.

Although she later received many honors and handled the snub with remarkable grace, her omission from the Nobel remains one of the most debated decisions in the prize’s history.

Another massive oversight is that of Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman.

The 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for their discovery of the 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.

Alpher and Herman were two theoretical physicists who had predicted the existence of the 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’s temperature with remarkable accuracy.

Many in the scientific community felt that Alpher and Herman’s foundational theoretical work was just as deserving of recognition, if not more so, as Penzias and Wilson’s 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, Alpher and Herman were left out. Their exclusion is often viewed as a major oversight, especially since their work helped shape the modern Big Bang theory.

This list of Nobel snubs is not exhaustive. There are many more people who have done work that is worthy of a Nobel Prize who never received it.

Satyendra Nath Bose contributed to the Bose–Einstein condensate.

Jonas Salk, who created the first polio vaccine. Fritz Zwicky, 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.

Vera Rubin, who studied the rotation curves of galaxies and found that stars at the edges were moving just as fast as those near the center, which is why we think there is 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 all humans have. As such, the Nobel Prize is inherently imperfect. Some prizes have been awarded when they shouldn’t have been and some were never awarded to 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 Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Today’s review comes from listener Nele Malvine over on Spotify. They write.

After 2 years of catching up, this is my first episode that I listened to on the day it came out! I have gained so much from this podcast. I can’t wait for my kindergarten-age 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!

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