2017-10-10|Sunatori's Nobel Horror Stories

Nobel Horror Stories

Dmitri Mendeleev should have won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for organizing the elements into the periodic table.
Nicola Tesla should have won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of wireless telegraphy instead of Guglielmo Marconi who used Nicola Tesla's patents.
John Macleod who merely oversaw the research on insulin co-won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine with Frederick Banting instead of Charles Best, a lowly graduate student who actually did the real work with Banting.
Johannes Fibiger received the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for having claimed to find organism Spiroptera carcinoma that caused cancer in mice and rats, but later, it was shown that this specific organism was not the primary cause of the tumours.
Lise Meitner should have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the radiochemical discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium and thorium in 1944 in addition to Otto Hahn.
Chien-Shiung Wu should have won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that contradicted the hypothetical law of conservation of parity instead of Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang.
Bill Cochran, not Rosalind Franklin, should have won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for the discovery of DNA in addition to Francis Crick and James Watson.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell should have won the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of pulsars instead of Anthony Hewish and Sir Martin Ryle who merely supervised her.
Jack Allen and Don Misener should have won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for the basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics in addition to Pyotr Kapitsa.
David Todd Wilkinson should have won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in addition to Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson.
Fred Hoyle should have won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 along with William Alfred Fowler for his theoretical studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe.
Peter H. Proctor and John E. McGinness should have won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of conductive plastics instead of Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa.
Michael Karas and Franz Hillenkamp should have won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry instead of Koichi Tanaka.
Mike Tompsett should have won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the CCD in addition to Willard Sterling Boyle and George Smith.
Andre Geim should not have won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of graphene which is just a layer of graphite.
Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt should not have won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of dark energy because the accelerating expansion of the universe turned out to be not a global but a local phenomenon.
Nick Holonyak Jr., who developed the first visible LED, and Herbert Paul Maruska (RCA) who had already developed a blue LED that should have won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of LED instead of Shuji Nakamura, Hiroshi Amano, Isamu Akasaki who improved the blue LED.
Herbert H. Chen should have won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass along with Arthur B. McDonald.

Controversies

John F. Nash almost did not win the 1994 pseudo-Nobel Prize in Economics because the Committee heard of his mental illness after the decision was made.
Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for photoelectric effect, not for the theories of relativity.
Uncle Al was almost nominated for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his work on artificial diamonds.

Grey Area in Competition of Credit

Isaac Newton versus Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over calculus.
Charles Darwin versus Alfred Russel Wallace over the Theory of Evolution by natural selection.
Albert Einstein versus David Hilbert over the Theory of General Relativity.
Alexander Bell versus Elisha Gray over the first patent for a telephone.
Thomas Edison versus Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans over the first electric light bulb.
Nicola Tesla versus Guglielmo Marconi over the development of wireless telegraphy.
Fibonacci over the Fibonacci sequence.
Buckminster Fuller (1950's) versus Walther Bauersfeld (a Zeiss factory circa 1924) over the geodesic dome.
Galileo Galilei versus Nicolaus Copernicus over heliocentrism.
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is in fact "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", which is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895.

Potential Nobel Prizes

Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery/Invention of memristor.
Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery/Invention of negative-index. metamaterial

Nobel Museum

Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, should disclose the following truth.

Nobel Prize

In 1888, the death of his brother Ludvig supposedly caused several newspapers to publish obituaries of Alfred in error. One French newspaper condemned him for his invention of military explosives - in many versions of the story, dynamite is quoted, although this was mainly used for civilian applications - and this is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead"), and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Nobel read the obituary and was appalled at the idea that he would be remembered in this way. His decision to posthumously donate the majority of his wealth to found the Nobel Prize has been credited to him wanting to leave behind a better legacy.

Nobel Prize
In 1888, the death of his brother Ludvig supposedly caused several newspapers to publish obituaries of Alfred in error. One French newspaper condemned him for his invention of military explosives - in many versions of the story, dynamite is quoted, although this was mainly used for civilian applications - and this is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead"), and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Nobel read the obituary and was appalled at the idea that he would be remembered in this way. His decision to posthumously donate the majority of his wealth to found the Nobel Prize has been credited to him wanting to leave behind a better legacy.

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"Sunatori, Go Simon" <GS.Sunatori@HyperInfo.CA>

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2024-04-11T01:57:51.000Z