Nobel prize winners sometimes display as much uniqueness when deciding how to spend their prize money as they did on the work that won them the award in the first place.
When Sir Paul Nurse won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2001, he decided to upgrade his motorbike. A fellow winner in 1993, Richard Roberts, installed a croquet lawn in front of his house. Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek, who won in 2004, said the prize meant "financial independence."
Lars Heikensten, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, said there were no obvious shopping trends among winners.
"I think it depends a lot on which country they come from, their personal finances... what kind of incomes they have when they get the prize," he said.
Real estate, however, is a popular option, at least among those willing to reveal what they spend the money on. Phillip Sharp, the American co-winner of the 1993 medicine prize, decided to splash out on a 100-year-old Federal style house. "I took that money and bought a little bit bigger house... It's a beautiful old place," he told AFP(法新社), adding that "The money is a nice part of the process", but "the important thing about the prize is the recognition."
For winners of the peace prize the decision is often moreclear-cut, as the honor tends to go to politicians, organizations and activists who are under more public supervision. Many, like US President Barack Obama in 2009 and the European Union in 2012, donate to charities.
Literature winners tend to be more private about how they use the money, but the choice is often equally straightforward. "Even if Nobel-winning authors are quite well known, many of them will not have made much money from writing," said Anna Gunder, a Nobel literature expert at Uppsala University. While the prize might keep the wolf from the door for some years, giving them freedom to write, it can also briefly have the opposite effect. "It really changes their careers… During the first year after they've won they often write less, but they generally continue after a year or two," said Gunder.
