How many documented cases are there of a nobel prize being gifted to a third party?
Executive summary
There are no documented counts in the provided reporting that answer how many times a Nobel Prize has been "gifted" to a third party; the Nobel Foundation’s public materials and the sampled encyclopedic sources describe award rules, joint awards, organisations as laureates, and a few refusals, but do not enumerate instances of laureates legally or formally transferring medals, diplomas or prize money to third parties [1] [2] [3]. Given the absence of direct evidence in the sources supplied, a definitive numeric answer cannot be produced from this reporting alone [2] [4].
1. What the question most likely means — forms of “gifted” and why sources must be precise
The phrase “gifted to a third party” can mean several different acts — an individual laureate physically handing their medal or diploma to someone else, donating or assigning the monetary award, legally transferring the laureate title or rights attached to the prize, or an institution receiving and keeping a prize on behalf of a collective — and the provided sources make clear that precision matters because Nobel rules treat recipients, medals, diplomas and prize money differently [1] [5].
2. What the statutes and Nobel institutions say about transferability and control
The Nobel Foundation’s public statements stress safeguarding the dignity and administration of the prizes and outline who has the right to award each prize, without describing routine mechanisms for a laureate to “transfer” a prize to another person, which indicates institutional hesitance to treat prizes as freely alienable property in public materials [2] [5].
3. What the sources do document that’s adjacent but not the same
The Nobel facts and lists document joint awards to up to three individuals and awards to organisations — for example noting that prizes have been awarded jointly and that organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross have been honoured multiple times — but those items address who the awarding bodies named as laureates, not subsequent private gifts by laureates to third parties [1] [4].
4. Known exceptional behaviours the sources record (refusals, institutional receipt)
Historical anomalies that the sources do record include laureates refusing awards — Jean-Paul Sartre declined the 1964 Literature Prize and Le Duc Tho declined the 1973 Peace Prize — and the fact that organisations can be laureates [3] [1]. These documented behaviours are not examples of a laureate formally gifting their Nobel to a third party; refusals and institutional awards are different legal and procedural phenomena overseen by the awarding bodies [3] [4].
5. Why the supplied reporting cannot produce a count
None of the supplied pages offers a compiled list or statistic of instances in which a Nobel medal, diploma, or prize money was transferred by a laureate to a third party, nor do they set out standardized rules or case law on private transfers; the available material therefore does not support producing a numeric count of documented “gifts” [2] [5] [1].
6. What would be needed to answer the question authoritatively
An authoritative count would require searching primary archival records and contemporary reporting: NobelPrize.org’s laureate pages and press releases for instances of donations or transfers, national and international press archives reporting on notable sales, donations or transfers of medals and diplomas, and legal records in jurisdictions where such transfers occurred; the statutes and official statements would frame whether such transfers were permitted or contested [4] [5] [2].
7. Bottom line
Based on the reporting supplied, it is not possible to state how many documented cases there are of a Nobel Prize being gifted to a third party because the sources document award rules, joint laureates and organisational laureates, and a small number of refusals, but do not catalogue post-award gifting or transfers [1] [4] [3]. To obtain a number would require targeted archival and news research beyond these materials.