January 20, 2026 01:13 PM UTC

Answer: Joseph Goebbels and Donald Trump

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• by: Colorado Pols

Question: Who are the only two people to have accepted a Nobel Prize award given to them by the original recipient?

Late last week, Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado — the 2025 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — presented her award to President Trump during a visit to the White House. The Nobel Committee subsequently made it clear that the possession of the actual Nobel medal has no bearing whatsoever on who is the rightful winner of the award:

A Nobel Peace Prize laureate receives two central symbols of the prize: a gold medal and a diploma. In addition, the prize money is awarded separately. Regardless of what may happen to the medal, the diploma, or the prize money, it is and remains the original laureate who is recorded in history as the recipient of the prize. Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

A laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced. A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time.

Trump is only the second person in history to accept someone else’s Nobel Prize. The other? As the Nobel Committee pointed out:

Knut Hamsun (Literature Prize 1920): In 1943, the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun travelled to Germany and met with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. After returning to Norway, he sent his Nobel medal to Goebbels as a gesture of thanks for the meeting. Goebbels was honoured by the gift. The present whereabouts of the medal are unknown.

Trump joins Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda and right-hand man for German leader Adolf Hitler, as the only two people in history to accept a Nobel Prize that they didn’t actually win.

Trump has long coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, which was actually awarded to his predecessor Barack Obama in 2009, and recently told the Norwegian Prime Minister that he was emboldened in his efforts to steal Greenland in part because he is sad about being snubbed for the award.

After all, nothing demonstrates peace like a newfound commitment to war.