19. Freud was nominated for a Nobel Prize 13 times, but was never awarded one
During his career, Sigmund Freud was nominated for a Nobel Prize, in the categories of Physiology or Medicine, for twelve years. He was also nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature, by Romain Rolland, the awardee of the Literature prize in 1915. Freud’s name was placed in nomination for the Literature prize in 1936, but failed to be awarded that prize either. While there is certainly no shame in failing to be awarded the Nobel Prize in any category, in Freud’s case it became a contentious point. His failure to win the award was based on the decision of an investigator, who recommended to the deciding committee that his work was not based on acceptable science.
The investigator informed the committee that Freud’s work lacked the requirements of true science. Among the scientists who refused to endorse Freud’s work, and his nomination for the prize for medicine was Albert Einstein. The scientific community did not consider Freud’s development of psychoanalysis to be based on fact, and that Freud had based much of it on his own theories, unsupported by experiment. One member of the Nobel medicine committee wrote, “Freud’s entire psychoanalytic theory, as it appears to us today (1929), is largely based on a hypothesis”. After 1938, Freud was never nominated again.