▲In 1962, James Watson won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick for discovering DNA's double helix structure.

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Fast forward to 2007 and Watson sparked outrage when he told a radio station that people from Africa didn't have the same mental aptitude as people from other places.

▲Watson lost his job as Chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York for his comments. He later apologized and was able to keep his honors.

▲In 1918, Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing a process allowing for industrial scale production of fertilizers and explosives. His Haber–Bosch process is responsible for half of the world's food production, but that's not the whole story.

▲Haber is considered the "Father of Chemical Warfare" for turning chlorine into a weapon for Germany in WWI, most famously used in the Battle of Ypres in 1915.

▲In 1976, Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, an award derided for misusing the memory of Alfred Nobel. Friedman won the prize for consumer analysis and theories of stabilization policy.

▲But Friedman was an adviser of the brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Over the course of Pinochet's 16-year military rule, 4,000 Chileans were killed or went missing while their dictator amassed a fortune of US$28 million.

▲Considered one of the greatest writers of all time, the author of 'War and Peace' never received the Nobel Prize for Literature, allegedly because of an anti-Russian bias from the Swedish panel.

▲Another Russian literary great who never received the Nobel Prize for Literature was the short story and playwright master Chekhov.

▲Among America's most famous writers, Mark Twain also never won the Nobel Prize for Literature. For years the Nobel panel would mostly give the award to European writers, ignoring the rest of the world's writing.

▲However, she was released in 2010 and led her party to make major democratic reforms, garnering support from around the world. But things changed for the worse rather suddenly.

▲Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for leading a non-violent struggle for democracy against the brutal dictatorship in her homeland of Myanmar. But she was under house arrest at the time and did not pick up her award.

▲Rohingya Muslims in the country were mercilessly slaughtered and Suu Kyi refused to condemn the Burmese military, whom she had formed government with. Many have called for her Nobel Peace Prize to be revoked.

▲Writer of the epic 'Doctor Zhivago,' this Russian novelist was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature but couldn't receive it.

▲The Soviet Union made Pasternak decline the Nobel Prize. After he died, Pasternak's son received it on his father's behalf in 1989.

▲The Soviet Union was insulted that the Nobel Committee chose a critic of the regime. 'Doctor Zhivago' highlighted the country's disparity between the rich and poor in the Soviet Union following WWI.

▲Famous French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964. Despite no authoritarian regime standing in his way, controversy ensued anyway.

▲In explaining his refusal, Sartre wrote, "It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form."

▲Sartre is one of two people in history to have voluntary declined a Nobel Prize. His stated reason was that he didn't want to become an institution, which happened in modern philosophy anyway.

▲North Vietnamese general and diplomat Lê Đức Thọ was jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for stopping fighting during the Vietnam War.

▲Lê Đức Thọ is the only other person than Sartre to decline a Nobel Prize voluntarily, saying there was no peace in Vietnam and he didn't feel comfortable accepting the prestigious award.

▲One year after being the first Vietnamese person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, despite his refusal, the war resumed and North Vietnam conquered the south by seizing Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975.

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Dylan did eventually give a lecture to the Nobel Committee, which was the only thing standing between him and the prize.

▲To the surprise of many, including the famous artist himself, Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.

▲Dylan was the first songwriter to ever have been bestowed the award. But he didn't show up to the awards ceremony, ignored the Nobel Committee's calls, and took two weeks to publicly address the win.

▲But Watson sold his Nobel Prize in 2014, claiming the scientific community had ostracized him for his comments on race and intelligence.

▲Following a PBS special, it was revealed that Watson still believes genetics and IQ are tied together and certain races are less intelligent. All of Watson's titles at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory were taken away, as the organization called his claims reckless and unsupported by science.

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Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Moniz won after developing an advanced method of lobotomy for psychosis. His lobotomies were used somewhat indiscriminately on 5,000 Americans over three years. The procedure was later halted on ethical grounds.

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The awarding of the prize is controversial to this day, especially because it was awarded three years after his chemical weapons were used. There is a Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin none the less.

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From aiding and abetting in warfare to famous snubs, the Nobel Prize has been the subject of heated debate since its inception. Here are some of the wildest controversies to rock the world's grandest award.