The Nobel Prizes are a series of awards, posthumously instituted by bequest of Alfred Nobel, to be awarded to individuals who had served humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. There is also a prize in economics. The prizes are generally considered to be supreme decoration in the world today. Over their hundred-year history, there have been several Nobel Prize controversies wherein apparently deserving recipients were excluded from the prize, or alternately where a recipient later appeared to be undeserving of the prize.
Controversial exclusions
- Jocelyn Bell first noticed the stellar radio source which was ultimately recognised as a pulsar, but she was excluded from the 1974 prize. Instead, her supervisor Antony Hewish was the second name on the prize (he developed the observational technique and designed the array which detected the pulsar). The prize was officially awarded for Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish's pioneering research in radioastrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture-synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars. Fred Hoyle famously argued that Jocelyn Bell should also have been included as it was she who first detected the pulsar signal in measurements made by the radio array, although she herself did not believe she should have been included.
- Charles Best first isolated insulin, but was excluded from the Nobel Prize in favour of his associate John Macleod. This snub so incensed Best's colleague, Frederick Banting, that he later voluntarily shared half of his 1923 Nobel Prize award money with Best.
- Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA, but died before she could receive the prize.
- Fred Hoyle was denied a share of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983, although the winner William Fowler acknowledged Hoyle as the pioneer of the concept of stellar nucleosynthesis. See also Fred Hoyle#Contribution to cosmogony
- Chung-Yao Chao first captured positron through electron-positron annihilation. He died in 1998 without receiving the prize.
- Chien-Shiung Wu (nicknamed the "First Lady of Physics") disproved the law of the conservation of parity and was the first Wolf Prize winner in physics. She died in 1997 without receiving the Nobel.
- Robert Millikan is widely believed to have been denied the 1920 prize for physics owing to Felix Ehrenhaft's claims to have measured charges smaller than Millikan's elementary charge. Ehrenhaft's claims were ultimately dismissed and Millikan was awarded the prize in 1923.
- Raymond V. Damadian was denied a share of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Medicine, which was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for developing magnetic resonance imaging. Damadian was overlooked despite making seminal advances in the MRI field. Damadian took out large advertisements in a number of international newspapers complaining about his exclusion from the award.
- The fact that Nobel Prizes may never be posthumously awarded means that future deserving recipients may be overlooked if they die before receiving the award.
Controversial recipients
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