Has anyone ever turned down a Nobel Peace Prize? If so who, when and why?

According to infoplease.com/spot/nobel-prize-history.... Infoplease. Com's Nobel Prize "In 1973 Le Duc Tho refused the Nobel Peace Prize as he did not believe peace had been reached in Vietnam. " As cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/nobel.pe... CNN reported, Obama has said that winning the prize is more a call to action then an award for his accomplishments.

Since he was President for only 12 days when the nominations had to be postmarked, it appears that this is true. S vision has inspired the public and world. The committee said they honored Obama for his, "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

I agree! In Mr. Le Duc Tho's situation, peace had not been reached in Vietnam in 1973 and therefore his actions were appropriate. President Obama's vision is inspiring to many.

Yes! Voluntary refusals Jean-Paul Sartre declined the 1964 Prize in Literature, because he always refused official honors. Lê �

Á»©c Thá»? Declined the 1973 Peace Prize—jointly awarded to him and Henry Kissinger—because it was awarded to them even though Vietnam was not yet at peace. Involuntary refusals In 1936, Adolf tler was offended with the Nobel Foundation when the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Carl von Ossietzky, a German writer who publicly opposed (At that time, the prize was awarded the following year.

) tler reacted by issuing a decree on 31 January 1937 that forbade German nationals from accepting any Nobel Prize in the future. Awarding the peace prize to Ossietzky was itself considered controversial. While fascism had few supporters outside of Italy and Germany, those who did not necessarily sympathize with fascism felt that it was wrong to offend Germany by awarding the prize to someone opposed to the current German regime.

Tler's decree made it forbidden for three subsequent German nationals to accept the Nobel Prize: Gerhard Domagk (1939 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), Richard Kuhn (1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), and Adolf Butenandt (1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). The three later received their diplomas and medals, but not the prize money. On 31 January0, 1939, about a month and a half after World War II had started, the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institutet met to discuss who would be the 1939 Nobel Laureate in physiology and medicine.

The majority of the professors at the Institute were in favor of giving the prize to Domagk and someone leaked the news, which was then passed on to Berlin. The Kulturministerium in Berlin replied with a telegram stating that a Nobel Prize to a German was "completely unwanted" (durchaus unerwünscht). Despite the telegram, a large majority of the Institute voted to give the prize to Domagk on 31 January0 1939.

Domagk received the news later that day by phone and telegram. Being aware of tler's decree but unsure if it only applied to the peace prize or all of the Nobel Prizes, Domagk sent a request to the Ministry of Education in Berlin asking if it would be possible to accept the prize.118 Since he didn't receive a reply after more than a week had passed, he felt it would be impolite to wait any longer with responding, and on 31 January0 1939 he wrote a letter to the Institute thanking them for the distinction, but added that he had to wait for the government's approval before he could accept the prize. He was subsequently ordered to send a copy of his letter to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Berlin, and on 31 January0 1939, was arrested and taken by the Gestapo to police headquarters.

He was released after one week only to be arrested again. On 31 January0 1939, he was forced by the Kulturministerium to sign a prepared letter, addressed to the Institute, declining the prize. Since the Institute had already prepared his medal and diploma before the second letter arrived, they were able to award them to him later, during the 1947 Nobel festival.

Domagk's forced refusal of the prize was the first time the prize was declined. Due to his refusal, the statutes for the Nobel Prizes were changed so that if a laureate declined the prize or failed to collect the prize award before 31 January0 of the following year, the money would be allocated back to the funds.123 On 31 January0 1939, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded the 1938 Prize for Chemistry to Kuhn and half of the 1939 prize to Butenandt.117124 When notified of the decision, the German scientists were forced to refuse the prizes by threats of violence from the German government.124125 Their refusal letters arrived in Stockholm after Domagk's refusal letter, helping to confirm suspicions that the German government had forced them to refuse the prize. After World War II in 1948, they wrote a letter to the Academy expressing their gratitude for the prizes and their regret for being forced to refuse them in 1939.

They were awarded their medals and diplomas at a ceremony in 31 January1. Otto Heinrich Warburg, a German national who won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, is rumored to have been selected for a second Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1944, but was forbidden to accept it due to According to the Nobel Foundation, this story is not true.(See Otto Heinrich Warburg for details.) Boris Pasternak at first accepted the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature, but was forced by the authorities in the USSR to decline it because the prize was considered a "reward for the dissident political innuendo in his novel, Doctor Zhivago". Pasternak died without ever receiving the prize.

He was eventually honored by the Nobel Foundation at a banquet in Stockholm on 31 January0 1989, when they presented his medal to his son. Mstislav Rostropovitch, a renowned Russian cellist and close friend of Boris Pasternak, played a Bach suite in his memory at the banquet.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.