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The Weirdest Nobels

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 5:43

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By Brian Clegg

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has marked the highlight of annual achievements, notably in the sciences and medicine, though also in literature (I’m not counting the oddities of peace and economics, which aren’t really in the same category). Just occasionally, though, prizes have been awarded that can now seem at best surprising, and at worst downright bizarre.

I’m going to pick out two of these. The first was the 1912 prize in physics. This went to Swedish engineer, Nils Gustaf Dalén. Not for some amazing breakthrough in physics theory or a wonderful experiment. Not even for a world-changing invention. Dalén won the prize for inventing a valve that turned the gas off during the daytime in lighthouses.

Bear in mind that the first lighthouse built specifically for electric lighting was Souter Lighthouse in Tyne and Wear, opened in 1871. From then on it was only a matter of time before gaslit lighthouses were extinct. It’s a bit like awarding someone a Nobel Prize this year for inventing a better incandescent light bulb. While it’s never possible to second-guess the workings of the Nobel Prize committee, it’s worth remembering that the prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and it’s just possible that they felt it was about time they had a Swedish winner, whatever his contribution to physics.

Less funny, perhaps, but more shocking was the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This was jointly awarded to Walter Rudolf Hess and António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz. It’s the award to Moniz here that raises eyebrows. This was for ‘his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses’.

That word ‘leucotomy’ is not one that many would recognise, but it covers a dark secret. It’s what now would be known as lobotomy. ‘Egas Moniz’, we are told on the Nobel website, ‘introduced lobotomy, a surgical operation involving an incision into the prefrontal lobe to mitigate severe symptoms of serious mental illnesses.’ It’s true that much medicine of the 1930s, when Moniz began the practice, had limited scientific basis, yet the barbarity of the way the treatment was often executed and the lack of evidence for its outcomes made it a shocking choice for a Nobel.

Dalén’s prize features in my book How Many Moons Does the Earth Have, while I found out about this Nobel from the Science Fictions podcast’s episode on electro-convulsive therapy, where lobotomy was mentioned in passing. This was the same day as watching the third episode of this year’s Silent Witness TV series, which also features the practice.

I’d be interested to hear what you consider other strange or funny prizes in the sciences or medicine – I don’t think it’s worth including literature as that’s so arbitrary anyway (mutters ‘Bob Dylan’).

Image of Souter Lighthouse from Unsplash by Adrian Craig

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.

Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-weirdest-nobels.html

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