Which other Nobel medals have been gifted, sold, or auctioned and what became of the recipients of those medals?
Executive summary
Nobel medals have periodically been gifted, sold or auctioned for reasons ranging from political gestures to fundraising and personal need; those transactions do not transfer the laureate title, which remains permanently attached to the named winner, but they have left varied legacies for the recipients and for the causes or buyers involved [1] [2]. Notable cases include wartime fundraising by Niels Bohr and August Krogh, headline-making auctions by Dmitry Muratov and James Watson, controversial gifts like Knut Hamsun’s transfer to Goebbels, and a growing stream of sales since the 2010s that reflect shifting motives and market appetite [3] [4] [5] [1] [6].
1. Historic wartime sales that turned medals into relief money
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Danish physicists Niels Bohr and August Krogh auctioned their Nobel medals to raise funds for Finnish civilian relief after the Soviet invasion of Finland — an act framed as patriotic sacrifice and fundraising rather than commodification — and those medals therefore became instruments of humanitarian support rather than private trophies [3] [7].
2. Gifts entangled with ideology: Hamsun’s medal and its moral stain
The Norwegian author Knut Hamsun sent his 1920 Nobel medal to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels after meeting him in 1943, a gesture the Nobel institution records as a transfer of the physical object while underscoring that the honour itself remains inseparably linked to the original laureate — a transfer that later generations view as politically fraught and morally compromising [1] [8].
3. Auctions as philanthropy and public spectacle: Dmitry Muratov’s record sale
Dmitry Muratov, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize co‑winner, auctioned his medal in June 2022 for a record $103.5 million and directed all proceeds to UNICEF’s fund for Ukrainian child refugees, transforming a personal symbol into a high‑profile charitable windfall and amplifying political messaging about press freedom and the war in Ukraine [3] [4] [2].
4. Reputation, penury and comeback narratives around sales
James Watson, co‑discoverer of DNA’s double helix, sold his 1962 Nobel medal at Christie’s in 2014 for several million dollars amid public censure over racist remarks; a Russian billionaire buyer, Alisher Usmanov, said he would return the medal to Watson while donating the purchase price to scientific causes, producing a tangled story of social exile, monetary compensation, and the buyer’s goodwill [4] [5] [9]. Other laureates or families have also sold medals for financial or institutional reasons in recent years, with sales becoming more visible since the mid‑2010s [6] [10].
5. Medals sold but laureate status untouched — Nobel Committee position
The Nobel Committees and the Nobel Foundation repeatedly emphasize that while medals, diplomas and prize money may be given away, sold or exhibited, the award itself — the honour and historical record — remains attached to the original laureate and cannot be reassigned; recent public transfers, including María Corina Machado’s gesture of presenting a Peace Prize medal to a political figure, prompted official reminders of that legal and symbolic separation [1] [2] [11].
6. A growing market, varied motives, and uneven outcomes for recipients
Since the 1980s and especially after 2014, a handful of medals have fetched high auction prices — examples include James Watson’s 2014 sale, Francis Crick’s family sale, Aage Bohr’s medal appearing in auctions, John Nash’s 2019 sale, Hans Krebs at Sotheby’s, and dozens of other medals catalogued by auction houses — with motives spanning fundraising for research and relief, estate sales, financial need (as in some medical cases), reputational fallout, or outright political theatre; the recipients’ post‑sale fortunes range from charitable impact to personal restitution to continued controversy, but the public record shows no transfer of the Nobel distinction itself [6] [10] [12] [9].
7. What the reporting does and does not show
Contemporary coverage documents many high‑profile transactions and the immediate destinations of proceeds in some cases (Muratov → UNICEF; Watson → buyer pledged return and donations), but records are incomplete about every single medal’s final owner or the long‑term personal consequences for every laureate; available sources make clear only that a number of medals have been gifted, auctioned or sold and that outcomes vary widely from charitable benefit to reputational repair or further controversy [4] [5] [6] [10].