Some curious facts about the Nobel Prizes, which will be announced starting this week:
A man’s world
Less than 5 percent of all Nobel laureates are women. Only two women won the physics prize: Marie Curie of France in 1903 and American Maria Goeppert-Mayer 60 years later. Twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners were women out of a total of 95 individuals — 20 were given to organizations. The literature prize has been awarded to 11 women out of 104 winners.
Age doesn’t matter
American economist Leonid Hurwicz became the oldest Nobel laureate last year at age 90. Briton Lawrence Bragg was 25 when he shared the physics prize in 1925 with his father.
No thanks
Two Nobel winners have turned down the prize. French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre declined the literature prize in 1964, citing his principle of rejecting all official honors. Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho rejected the 1973 peace prize shared with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, saying there was no peace in his country.
Angry Hitler
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was so enraged by the 1936 prize going to German pacifist and dissident Carl von Ossietzky that he barred Germans from accepting future Nobels. The ban prevented chemistry laureates Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and medicine winner Gerhard Domagk from going to Stockholm. They all received their diplomas after World War II.
Glaring omission
Indian pacifist Mohandas K. Gandhi never received the Peace Prize, even though he was the 20th-century symbol of nonviolence. He was nominated five times, including just before his murder in January 1948. Awards committee members have later lamented the omission, and called the 1989 prize to Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in part a recognition of Gandhi.
The Associated Press
