Nobel Prizes: 5 unexpected reactions from winners, from indifferent to angry
1. Mixed Reactions to Winning a Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are undoubtedly the most prestigious recognition in the world for achievements in science, medicine, literature, or world peace. For most winners, the call informing them of their win marks the highest point in their lives. But not everyone is thrilled. For some, it means nothing. And for others, it simply irritates or angers them.
One of this year’s winners, Fred Ramsdell, decided to “disconnect” and dedicate his time to “living his best life” in the mountains of Idaho, just in time for when the awards were announced (he eventually found out 12 hours later and upon hearing the news, his first reaction was. At least he didn’t get angry like some other Nobel winners).
Let’s take a look at some of the reactions of Nobel Prize winners.
2. Is it a Hoax?
Many winners assumed that the call from an unknown number in Sweden was a hoax (which is what most people would think too). Mary Brunkow, who shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Ramsdell, thought the Nobel call was “a hoax, a scam, so I hung up the phone and went back to sleep,” she said in an interview with the Nobel Committee.
And Brunkow is not alone. Paul Romer, who won the “for integrating technological innovations into long-term macroeconomic analysis” also let the answering machine take the call several times, but then thought that maybe, if they were insisting so much, it was because they wanted to speak with him about something important.
There were people who were hard to convince. Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration into the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the well between cultures and continents,” but he had to be convinced that it was not a scam.
“A guy tells me I won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and I took it as a joke. I told him not to bother me anymore,” Burnah told him at that moment. “But he kept talking and gradually convinced me.”
3. And then there’s Bob Dylan
Speaking of winning the Nobel at inconvenient times, when the legendary songwriter and singer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for “having created new poetic expressions in the great tradition of American song,” he was not even there and didn’t find out.
It took the Nobel Committee more than two weeks to contact Dylan by phone. At that time, the administrative director of the Swedish academy, Odd Zchiedrich, admitted to CNN that “they had stopped trying, and we had told his representative and friend that we needed confirmation from him, but he had never responded.”
The decision to award Dylan the prize sparked some controversy in literary communities, and although initially Dylan was unenthusiastic about the award, he later accepted it and said he was honored by the prize, which left him speechless. He then missed the award ceremony due to “preexisting commitments.”
Lessing was exasperated when journalists broke the news to her. She said, “Of course, you want me to say something motivating, or something like that.” When the reporter mentioned that it was a recognition of her lifelong work, Lessing responded, “What do you think I should say? Tell me, and I’ll say it.”
Finally, when asked if the award meant something to her, she impatiently said, “I’ve won all the awards in Europe, so I’m very happy to win them all. Very happy. Well.”
Smith later told the reporter that when talking to Lessing, she didn’t seem as impatient, but rather pleased with the recognition.
### Peter Higgs went into hiding
Sometimes a renowned scientist has a premonition that they will be awarded the Nobel Prize and wants nothing to do with it. This was the case with Peter Higgs, who won the Nobel Prize for “the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of the mass of subatomic particles.” He shared the prize with François Englert. In 1964, Higgs and Englert formulated a theory about an invisible field with zero mass or charge that gives mass to any particle, a concept known as the Higgs boson. When the existence of the boson was confirmed, the physicist went into hiding, and they couldn’t find him.
On the day the prize was announced, Higgs hid in a pub (he said they serve very good beers there) to avoid the Swedish academy and journalists. He also turned off his phone. It was a woman who later told him on the street that he had won the Nobel Prize. Higgs admitted to physicist Frank Close, who wrote a book describing Higgs’ research, that the discovery of the boson ruined his life. “My relatively peaceful existence was ending,” and he described his style as “working in isolation, with the occasional brilliant idea.”
Higgs, however, reacted positively: “I’m obviously very happy, quite relieved that it’s all over because it took so long to arrive,” he told The Telegraph.
