5 of the World’s Most Devastating Financial Crises

The 5%

Bell Burnell, Jocelyn
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, 1967.
Roger W. Haworth
By 2014 the various Nobel Prizes had been awarded to 864 people and 25 organizations. Of the winners, only 47 were women, leading some to claim that the prize committees overlook females. One of the perhaps best-known alleged slights concerned Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars in 1967 and later published a paper with her adviser, Antony Hewish. However, only Hewish and another colleague, Martin Ryle, were given the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for the discovery of pulsars.

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  Fighting over the Peace Prize
  

Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat.
Adel Hana/AP Images
The most-contentious Nobel Prize is arguably the one for peace. Many recipients draw criticism for purported unpeaceful behavior. Among the most-notable examples is Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat. In 1994 he shared the prize with Israelis Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for their work on the Oslo Accords, an integral part of the peace process between Palestine and Israel. However, many critics noted that while Arafat was head of Fatah, the PLO group engaged in acts of terrorism.

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  Knock, Knock
  

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, c. 1933.
Photos.com/Jupiterimages
Who’s there? Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler who? Adolf Hitler who was nominated for a peace prize. Not laughing? Neither did most people when Hitler was put up for the prize in 1939. A Swedish legislator had nominated him as a joke, but no one found it amusing. Instead, it created an uproar, and the nomination was quickly withdrawn. However, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s nominations in 1945 and 1948 were made in all seriousness.

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  Thanks, but No Thanks
  

Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre, photograph by Gisèle Freund, 1968.
Gisele Freund
While most consider the Nobel Prize a major honor, two winners have voluntarily declined the award. Jean-Paul Sartre, who refused all official awards, did not accept the 1964 literature prize. In 1974 he was joined by Le Duc Tho, who, with Henry Kissinger, shared the peace prize for their work to end the Vietnam War. Tho, however, refused to accept it, saying that “peace has not yet been established.”

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