Nobel Prize questions are a quiz staple because the popular version is full of near-truths: a prize every year, one winner per category, no refusals, no winners who have died. The Nobel Foundation’s own “Nobel Prize facts” page, read on 28 October 2026, settles each of them with a figure or a name. Its counts run from 1901 to 2026.
Myth: a Nobel Prize is awarded every year
The page says that between 1901 and 2026 the Nobel Prizes and the economics prize were awarded 639 times, to 1,036 people and organisations. It also says there have been 49 occasions when prizes were not awarded, most of them during the First World War (1914 to 1918) and the Second World War (1939 to 1945). Physics, for example, has no prize listed for 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941 and 1942, while the Peace Prize has 19 empty years on the page’s list.
The page quotes the Foundation’s statutes on what happens next: if no work under consideration is of the importance indicated, the prize money is reserved until the following year, and if the prize still cannot be awarded, the amount is added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.
Myth: there are six prizes and Alfred Nobel created them all
Alfred Nobel signed his last will on 27 November 1895, leaving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. The sixth prize was added later. In 1968, according to the page, Sveriges Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The economics prize is therefore not one of the five named in the will. The page lists 58 economics prizes against 120 in physics.
Myth: nobody turns the prize down
Two laureates declined. Jean-Paul Sartre, awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, declined because, the page says, he had consistently declined all official honours. Le Duc Tho, awarded the 1973 Peace Prize jointly with Henry Kissinger for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord, said he was not in a position to accept it, citing the situation in Vietnam.
A separate group did not choose. The page says four laureates were forced by authorities to decline. Adolf Hitler forbade three German laureates, Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk, from accepting; all of them could later receive the diploma and medal, but not the prize amount. Boris Pasternak, the 1958 literature laureate, initially accepted but was later coerced by the authorities of the Soviet Union to decline.
Myth: a prize can never go to someone who has died
The rule has a date and an exception. From 1974, the statutes stipulate that a prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement. Before 1974 it happened twice: Dag Hammarskjöld (Peace, 1961) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Literature, 1931).
The exception was tested in 2011. After the medicine prize was announced, it emerged that one of the laureates, Ralph Steinman, had died three days earlier. The Board of the Nobel Foundation examined the statutes and concluded he should remain a laureate, because the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet had announced the prize without knowing of his death.
Myth: Nobel Prizes are mostly shared
The statutes say a prize amount may not be divided between more than three persons. The page’s table shows how that plays out: of the 639 prizes, 365 went to a single laureate, 151 were shared by two and 123 by three. In literature, 115 prizes went to one laureate, four were shared by two and none by three. In all, the page counts 1,000 individuals and 28 organisations among the laureates.
Myth: winning twice means winning twice in one field
The page lists several multiple winners. Marie Curie received the 1903 Physics prize and the 1911 Chemistry prize. John Bardeen won Physics in 1956 and 1972, and Frederick Sanger won Chemistry in 1958 and 1980. K. Barry Sharpless won Chemistry in 2001 and 2022. Linus Pauling, the page says, is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes: Chemistry in 1954 and Peace in 1962.
Organisations count too. The page says the International Committee of the Red Cross has been honoured by a Peace Prize three times (1917, 1944 and 1963), and that its founder, Henry Dunant, was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is listed with Peace Prizes in 1954 and 1981.
Age and gender: the two extremes quiz setters ask about
The youngest laureate in any category is Malala Yousafzai, awarded the Peace Prize in 2014 at age 17. The oldest is John B. Goodenough, awarded the 2019 Chemistry prize for the development of lithium-ion batteries at age 97. Between 1901 and 2026, the page says, the prizes were awarded 70 times to women.
Quick check before the next quiz night
- Were prizes always awarded? No: 49 occasions without one, mostly in the two world wars.
- How many prizes did Nobel’s will name? Five categories; economics came from the Riksbank in 1968.
- Has anyone declined? Sartre (1964) and Le Duc Tho (1973) did; four others were forced by authorities to.
- Posthumous winners? Two before 1974 (Hammarskjöld, Karlfeldt); from 1974 the statutes bar it unless death follows the announcement.
- Only person with two unshared prizes? Linus Pauling.
The bottom line
The Nobel Foundation’s page makes the popular claims easy to test: prizes were skipped 49 times, the economics prize is a 1968 addition by Sweden’s central bank, two laureates declined, and posthumous awards ended as a rule in 1974. Counts and extremes on the page run to 2026 and can change with each new announcement, so quiz answers built on them should carry a date.
Sources
- Nobel Prize facts, NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), read 28 October 2026 (nobelprize.org)
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