MUMBAI: Mahatma Gandhi missed out on a Nobel Prize because of the oversight on the part of the Nobel committee. However, in case of Sergei Korolev, it was the other way round. The Nobel committee was keen to give the award to Korolev for his role in sending the first man-made object into a space flight.
Even as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, it is fascinating to know the intrigue and infighting between the Soviet scientists that deprived the Sputnik creator from the highest honour in the field of science. And this account comes from none other than Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita Khrushchev who was the Soviet Premier when Sputnik was launched.
The 72-year-old Khrushchev, who is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, had seen how his father was forced to deny the request from the Nobel committee.
Though Sputnik’s launch had become the talking point of the entire world in 1957, no one had a clue as to who its chief designer was. “At that time, nobody knew the name 'Sergei Korolev'; it was classified,” Khrushchev told DNA.
“The world was desperate to know about him. In fact, the Nobel Prize committee even decided to give an award to the ‘Chief Designer’ of Sputnik. However, they had a condition — they wanted to know his name.”
This offer put Nikita Khrushchev in a quandary. What bothered the Soviet Premier was the fact that Korolev was the head of the council of chief designers that was in charge of Soviet Union's space projects. Since all the members had been equally awarded (Lenin Prize) following the launch of Sputnik, Khrushchev feared that giving away the Nobel to Korolev would make others angry.
“My father knew that the chief designers were ambitious and jealous. If the Nobel committee were to give the award to just Korolev, my father thought the members would get upset,” Khrushchev recalled.
Nikita Khrushchev feared that the team would simply disintegrate, and with it, the hopes of Soviet Union’s future space research and missile design. So, in his reply to the Nobel committee, the Premier said that all the Soviet people had contributed to the project and that every Soviet citizen deserved the award.
While Korolev was offended, the rest of the chief designers quietly approved of the decision. And the Nobel? “It was awarded to someone else,” Sergei Khrushchev said.
