Scorned laureatesHahn's discovery as such was not so controversial, only the later application of it.
Portrait taken 3 march 1959 German physical chemist Otto Hahn, decorated with chain of president of Max-Planck-Society, for his 80th birthday
The same cannot be said for some other Nobel research, including that of Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, who won the 1949 Nobel Medicine Prize "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses".
Today the brain surgery procedure is known as a lobotomy and is only used in rare circumstances. The Nobel Foundation's website notes soberly that the surgery was "controversial".
Bengt Jansson, a psychiatrist and former member of the medicine prize selection committee, wrote: "I see no reason for indignation at what was done in the 1940s as at that time there were no other alternatives!"
Chemical treatments for mental illnesses were later developed.
And then there are the laureates blasted by environmentalists.
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