Neskuchny "life" of Nobel medals after presenting: removal in gold, theft, loss

Over the years, Nobel medals are sold to pay for treatment, they fall into museums, and sometimes they provoke diplomatic scandals.

Each year, the Nobel Prize is awarded for research on physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, literature, economics and for “promoting the establishment of peace”. The award has been issued since 1901 and has already been awarded 603 times.

Over the years, two world wars, many civil wars and economic crises have passed from the first presentation.

There were many exciting stories with Nobel prizes. Three Nobel medals were dissolved to hide from the Nazis; Two mixed up between the laureates, and the error was corrected only after four years; One medal was confused by the Safety Service of the Fargo Airport, since in the X -ray looked completely black.

In addition to funny accidents, laureates for various reasons lost their gold medals and honorary diplomas. The heirs are sold through auctions. Sometimes it happens that great minds and their families lay medals to pay bills.

History of the "King of Dynamite"

Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm in a family of engineers. Although Nobel adhered to pacifist ideas during his lifetime, he built wealth on weapons: he discovered more than 90 factories in different countries for the production of weapons and dynamite, which himself invented .

In 1888, the French newspaper mistakenly wrote about the death of Alfred Nobel. In fact, his brother died in Cannes, but the reporters did not check the information. After reading his own necrologist entitled “The Death Contractor”, Nobel thought about what memory he would leave behind. The inventor compiled a will, according to which all his property was supposed to go to create a special fund to finance outstanding scientific discoveries.

On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel, at 63, died at the villa in San Remo, Italy, from hemorrhage to the brain. A few years later, the lawsuit of the Nobel clerks with his descendants and relatives, on June 29, 1900, the Nobel Fund was still founded to manage finance and organize Nobel Prizes.

Since 1905, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has been responsible for the award of the Nobel Prize of the World, and Swedish organizations are responsible for the rest of the awards.

I, the notorious, I have signed, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, having thought and decide, I will realize my testament about the property I have acquired ... My capital should be transferred into securities, creating a fund, which will be issued as a bonus to those who, during the previous year, brought the greatest benefits to humanity.

War is not a place for science

Until 1980, medals with a diameter of 66 mm were smelted from gold 23-karat or 958 samples and weighed approximately 200 grams. Since 1980, they have been made from 18-carat green gold or 750 sample with a coating of 24-karat gold.

The Nobel Medal is an expensive thing. The cost of the medal is approximately 5 thousand dollars. Although not gold makes it truly valuable, but colossal historical significance.

At the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish war, Selma Laherlef sent the Nobel Medal in literature and the Golden Medal of the Swedish Academy to the Finnish government to help raise money for confrontation with the USSR. The Government of Finland considered that the writer’s awards are too important, so it raised the money in another way and returned the medals.

There are many rumors about the medals of the three laureates of the Nobel Prize during the Second World War: the Germans Max von Laue (1914), James Frank (1925) and the Danes Niels Bora (1922).

The Institute of Theoretical Physics of Professor Bor in Copenhagen has become a refuge for German Jewish scientists since 1933. Max von Lauue and James Frank left medals there so that they were not confiscated by the Nazis.

In 1940, Denmark was occupied, and in Hitler Germany, gold deportation from the country was considered a criminal offense. The names of the laureates are engraved on medals, so their detection by the Nazis would have serious consequences.

The medals helped to preserve the Hungarian chemist of Jewish origin, Dyurd de Heveshi (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry of 1943), who worked at the same institute.

I suggested burying the medal, but Bor did not like this idea, as they could find the medal. I decided to dissolve it. While the invasion forces marched along the streets of Copenhagen, I began to dissolve the medals of Laue and James Frank. After the war, the gold was restored and the Nobel Fund generously handed Laue and Frank new Nobel medals.

Dier de Heveshi

Heveshi wrote Laue after the war that it was difficult to hide medals. The Nazis occupied the Bor Institute, but found nothing. Medals calmly waited the war in a solution of royal vodka.

He did not mention the Bora medal, but the documents in the archives show that the Niels Bora medal, like the Danish laureate in physiology and medicine in 1920 of August Krog, were auctioned in 1940 in favor of the Finland Assistance Fund. Then the medals were bought by an anonymous buyer and donated to the Danish historical museum.

The Norwegian writer Knut Gamsun in 1943handed over the medal to the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich Goebbels. By the end of the war, Hamsun was tried for the state treason and fined without imprisonment. At the end of his life, the writer, who previously supported Nazism, was disappointed in his views. It is not known what happened to his medal.

Room money, and life is gold

The first medal of the Nobel Prize of the World sold at the auction was the medal of the English parliamentarian and pacifist William Chemimer. It was sold in 1985 in London for 17 thousand dollars. The second medal of the world award at the auction was the medal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina Carlos Saader Lamas. It was sold in 2014 in Baltimore for $ 1.16 million.

The auction is not always justified. The family of the American writer William Faulkner removed the medal from the sale in 2013 after she did not raise 500 thousand dollars that the family hoped to get. But a year later, the Prize of the world of Auguste Beernart left the hammer for 661 thousand dollars, and in 2015 the Hans of Krebs was sold for 425.5 thousand dollars.

The Nobel Peace Prize Frenchman Aristide Brian (received in 1926) was sold in 2008 for 12.2 thousand euros to the French Ecuzey Saint-Nazer. In the museum, the medal was stored until 2015, and then it was stolen.

In 2014, the medal of James Watson, the discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, left the hammer at the Christie's auction for $ 4.8 million. The medal was bought by one of the richest people in Russia - businessman Alisher Usmanov, declaring the intention to return the Lot to the scientist, which he did six months later.

Before the auction, Watson said that he was selling a medal to transfer money to the laboratories of Kold-Spring Harbor to Long Island. In the laboratory, he was removed from work after he spoke about the intellectual abilities of representatives of different races. This is the first case in history when the Nobel medal was sold at auction during the life of a laureate. In April 2013, at the same Christie's auction, for $ 2.2 million, the Nobel award was bought by the colleagues of Watson - Francis Crick.

I consider an unacceptable situation in which an outstanding scientist sells a reward received for his achievements. The work of Mr. Watson contributed to research on the fight against cancer from which my father died. It is important for me that my funds will be aimed at scientific research, and a reward will remain with a person who deserves it like no other.

Alisher Usmanov

Both the gold medal and the handwritten certificate of John Nash in 2016 were put up for sale at the Sotheby's auction. The exact amount of the sale is unknown, but the range from 2.5 to 4 million dollars is indicated. The mathematician received the Economics Award in 1994, and seven years later the film “Games of the Reason” was released on the screens, which glorified the biography of the laureate. In the spring of 2015, John and his wife Alicia died in a car disaster. The taxi driver in which the spouses rode lost control during overtaking.

In 2015, the Leon Lederman family, a laureate in physics, sold a Nobel medal for 765 thousand dollars to pay for the treatment of a scientist. Professor of Chicago University suffered from dementia since 2011 and died in the nursing home at 96.

There were no surprises

On the "Swedish" Nobel medals, the name of the laureate is engraved on the back. And the names of the world laureates and the Economy Awards are engraved on the edge of the medal and are poorly noticeable.

In 1975, this created problems for Russian Leonid Kantorovich and American Tyalling Kupmans. Medals mixed up during delivery in Stockholm. Since this happened during the Cold War, it took four years of diplomatic efforts to exchange medals.

In December 1999, the Nobel Medal of the organization “Doctors without Borders” (MSF) disappeared. Members of the French delegation MSF lent her to impress girls in Oslo bars. Morten Rostrup, a member of the Norwegian delegation of MSF, said in the 2006 book that traces of the teeth of those who checked whether the medal was made of gold remained on the medals.

The 1913 medal of the Indian writer Rabindranate Tagora was abducted in 2004 from the Museum of the University of VISVA Bharati, when the security officers watched the match on the crib.

In the same place, in India, in 2017, robbers stole a copy of the 2014 Nobel Peace medal Kylash Satyarti "for the struggle against oppression of children and youth and for the right of all children to education." The original medal of the Nobel Prize of the World is stored in the museum.

The human rights activist Shirin Ebadi in 2009 accused the Iranian authorities of confiscating assets from a bank cell. The 2003 Nobel Medals of the Nobel Prize of the World “for the contribution to the development of democracy and the struggle for human rights, especially women and children in Iran” and the Order of the Legion's Honorary was seized to pay taxes. The authorities refuted this statement, but after the international scandal they returned the awards.

I received this gold medal from the "king of Sweden" because I helped to find that the expansion speed of the universe increases

Brian Schmidt

The 2011 laureate in 2011 Brian Schmidt had a incident at Fargo Airport. His grandmother from Fargo, North Dakota, asked to bring the medal, as she wanted to see her. On the way home, Schmidt had to send a gold medal through the X -ray apparatus of the airport security service. The security workers saw a round black object on the screen and began to ask questions.

"Rejected" medals

In the history of the award there were also people who abandoned the Nobel Prize and, accordingly, from the medal. For the opening of a new type of radiation, X -ray received the Nobel Prize in Physics of 1901. Today he is known as a researcher who did not strive for rewards or wealth.

He rejected the noble title and sacrificed the Nobel Prize Alma Mater-the University of Würzburg. A considerable price had to pay for altruism: at the time of death in 1923, X-ray remained almost bankrupt due to inflation after the First World War.

The German scientists Richard Kun, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk were forced to refuse awards in connection with the threats of the Gestapo. In 1958, Boris Pasternak refused political pressure from a prize in literature. The medal was handed to his son in Stockholm in 1989.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre motivated the refusal “personal reasons”, and the Vietnamese politician Le Duc THO abandoned the world prize due to the continued hostilities in the country.

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