A Brief History
On August 22, 2006, Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for creating the proof of the “Poincaré conjecture,” but then he refused the award, explaining, “I’m not interested in money or fame; I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.”
Digging Deeper
Some other people that have refused awards include:
Three people have refused their Oscar statuettes, including Dudley Nichols in 1936, George Scott in 1970, and Marlon Brando in 1973.
Jean-Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, as he previously refused France’s Legion of Honour.
Lê Đức Thọ spurned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, because peace in Vietnam had not been reached.
Rocker David Bowie refused both the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2000 and a Knighthood in 2003.
High school teacher Al Levie refused to accept the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award in 2012, because it was to be presented by Republican Paul Ryan.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Davis, Bruce. The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Brandeis University Press, 2022.
Worek, Michael. Nobel: A Century of Prize Winners. Firefly Books, 2010.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by George Bergman (1943–) of Russian-born mathematician Grigori (“Grisha”) Perelman at Berkeley, California, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
