The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious award in the world. It symbolizes worldwide recognition and makes the laureate a famous and respected person. But in history there were people who consciously refused the Nobel Prize. Each of them had their own reasons.
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1
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, learning that he was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize, on October 7, 1906, in a letter to his acquaintance writer Arvid Yarnefelt asked that he not be awarded this prize. The great classic of Russian literature believed that money is an absolute evil, and receiving a Nobel Prize may put him in a difficult position. That year, the Italian poet Josue Carducci received the Nobel Prize.
2
German scientists Richard Kun, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk could not receive the Nobel Prize due to the ban on Adolf Hitler. In 1937, he forbade German citizens to receive this award. Hitler was outraged that once a Nobel Prize received an ardent critic of the theory of Nazism, Karl von Osetskiy. German scientists received their well-deserved awards only after the end of World War II.
3
In 1958, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Boris Pasternak. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR considered that the reason for such a high award was the Doctor Zhivago novel banned in the USSR. Parsnip was subjected to real persecution. Offensive articles began to appear in the Soviet press, threats began to come to the writer, and his beloved Olga Ivinskaya was even fired from her job. Under the influence of unprecedented pressure, Pasternak was forced to send a telegram with the refusal of the prize to Stockholm. The Nobel Committee considered the refusal of the writer compelled. The medal and diploma were later awarded to Pasternak's son.
4
Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize, defending his beliefs. In a statement to reporters, he said that recently only Western writers have received awards. He regretted that the Nobel Prize was once awarded to Pasternak. And not Mikhail Sholokhov. He then declared to the whole world that the Nobel Committee on Literature was too politicized and did not award prizes to those who really deserved them.
5
In 1970, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In the USSR, this news was perceived extremely negatively. Solzhenitsyn was simply not allowed out of the country at the award ceremony. Alexander Isaevich received his diploma, medal and monetary reward in 1975, after he was expelled from the USSR.
6
In 1973, two people were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at once: US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, member of the Political Bureau of the North Vietnam Party, for working together to resolve the Vietnam conflict. Kissinger accepted the award, but Le Duck Tho did not. He said that the Paris ceasefire did not stop the war, so he had no right to receive a peace prize. The war in Vietnam ended only in 1975 with the victory of North Vietnam.
7
In 2004, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Austrian writer Elfrid Jelinek. Elfrida did not go to the award ceremony, but she still took the cash reward. She stated that she did not deserve such a high award, but apparently she needed money at that moment.
8
In this list, it is worth mentioning the mathematician from St. Petersburg Grigory Perelman. He was not nominated for a Nobel Prize. In 2006, Perelman refused the Fields Prize, a mathematical analogue of the "Nobel". The main reason for his refusal Grigory Yakovlevich called his disagreement with the organized mathematical community.
