The NO-bel Prize: Five people who turned it down

Dubai - In light of Bob Dylan's snubbing of the Nobel Prize recently, here are other figures who refused the prestigious award.

In its entire history, the Nobel Prize is rife with controversies surrounding both the institution and its laureates. A quick Google search alone shows controversies such as the awards being too "Eurocentric", certain laureates not having been known before their awarding, and last but not the least, figures who turned it down either by snubbing it (Bob Dylan comes to mind) or outright.
Here are some famous figures in history that gave a big no to the Nobel Prize one way or another.
Richard Kuhn (1938, Chemistry)

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv
Kuhn was the man responsible for discovering the chemical structures of vitamins A, B2 and B6. He was forced by the Nazi regime to turn down the prize after Adolf Hitler issued a decree in 1937 barring any German to accept it. A true genius who gained his PhD degree at the age of 21, he was a polarising figure as he is also credited for discovering a deadly nerve agent post-war.
Boris Pasternak (1958, Literature)

AP file photo
Pasternak is known throughout the world as the author of Doctor Zhivago - a fictional account on the Russian Revolution which gave birth to the Soviet Union. The award humiliated and enraged the USSR which forced Pasternak to decline the prize. He never received it during his lifetime and it was awarded posthumously to his son in 1989.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1964, Literature)

Wikimedia Commons
A leading figure in the philosophy of existentialism, Sartre is known for many schools of thought that he founded as well as his relationship with fellow philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. He refused the Nobel Prize outright because he said that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970, Literature)

AP file photo
The Russian author won the prize for his astounding work in chronicling the life inside Soviet concentration camps (he was incarcerated in one) in his underground works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and the Gulag Archipelago. The Swedish government refused to hold the ceremony inside its Moscow Embassy which prompted the author to turn it down. He received the award four years later after the USSR banished him as a political dissident.
Le Duc Tho (1973, Peace)

Le Duc Tho (right) with co-laureate Henry Kissinger (left): AP file photo
A Vietnamese revolutionary, general and politician with the Communist Party; Le Duc Tho was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 alongside US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for their signing of the Paris Peace Accords which aimed to end hostilities in the Vietnam War. Tho declined the prize stating that "Peace has not yet really been established in South Vietnam, hostilities ceased only in 1975 with North Vietnam capturing the South.