Mahatma Gandhi
This well-known Indian political activist is known to be an avid fighter against racial discrimination in South Africa. He was a centerpiece in pushing through the 1914 Indian Relief Act and was the reason why India achieved their independence.
Even so, Gandhi was shortlisted five times for the famous prize. He never received one. Some believe that this is due to the fact that the committee had a Euro-centric viewpoint, and they didn’t appreciate India’s struggles for its independence.
Yasser Arafat
The Palestine Liberation Organization’s leader, Yasser Arafat, received the Nobel Price Prize in 1994, sharing it with the Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. They received the prize thanks to their achievements in the Oslo Accords, which was one of the main components of the Palestine and Israel peace process.
The Prize was surrounded by a lot of controversies because Arafat was also the head of Fatah, the PLO group that was directly involved in cruel acts of terrorism.
The Women
From 1901 to 2019, all the Nobel Prizes and the Prizes in Economic Sciences have been given 597 and 950 times to different people and organizations. However, only 54 women received the prize, with Marie Curie being honored twice.
A great example of gender discrepancy is the awful omission of Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She was the one that discovered pulsars, all the way back in 1967, and she published a paper with Antony Hewish, her longtime advisor.
In 1974, Hewish and his other colleague, Martin Ryle, were the ones to receive the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics. Bell Burnell was completely left out. If you want to learn more about the history of such a prestigious prize, you might want to read “The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige” by Burton Feldman.
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