6 Nobel Laureates That Committed Suicide

Unwelcome life situations. Life-threatening illnesses. And for some just plain old criticism. These seemingly led these high-caliber academicians and professionals to suicide. Ernest Hemingway's case is perhaps the most known. These are all men whose works and professional efforts impacted various aspects of academia and truly civilization
itself. Their ignominious departure doesn't at play down on their revolutionary contributions to humanity. They truly deserve every respect and recognition they can get. And so here are 6 Nobel Laureates that went down by suicide, each supposedly at the peak of his career.

6. Harry Martinson

He received the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature jointly with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson "for their writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos.
Martinson debuted as a poet in 1929 authoring the anthology Fem unga (five youths) with five other poets. Their work introduced Swedish modernism.
He also recorded some pretty huge success as a novelist especially with his semiautobiographical  Nässlorna blomma (Flowering Nettles) in 1935. He was equally the first proletarian writer to be elected a member of the Swedish academy.
Unfortunately, he couldn't handle the criticism that followed his award, because of which he committed suicide on 11 February 1978 at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. He had cut his stomach open by a pair of scissors in what had been described as a "hara-kiri-like manner".

5. Percy Williams Bridgeman

The American physicist lived from 21 April 1882 to 20 August 1961. He had a pretty prolific career that produced several findings in physics. These include findings from his study of the compressibility, electric and thermal conductivity tensile strength and viscosity of more than a hundred different compounds. He developed the Bridgman seal and its eponym for the Bridgman's thermodynamic equations. His work on the physics of high pressure was one of the numerous discoveries that earned him the 1946 Nobel Prize in physics.
He died by his own hands by a gunshot. This was perhaps a result of metastatic cancer he had suffered for some time. Part of his suicide note read "it isn't decent for society to make a man do this thing himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself".

4. Hans Fischer

He was born to Dr.Eugene Fischer and Anna Herdegen in Höchst on Main, now a city district of Frankfurt. main now a district of Frankfurt. He attended a primary school in Stulfgart. He had his tertiary education at the University of Lausanne, where he read Chemistry and Medicine, graduating in 1904.
The main focus of his scientific career was the investigation of the pigments in blood bile and also some chlorophyll in leaves as well as with the chemistry of pyrrole from which these pigments are derived. His work on the synthesis of bilirubin and haemin was what earned him the Nobel Prize. Sadly, giving in to despair over the destruction of his institute and his work during the last days of world war 2 he committed suicide on 31 March 1945.

3. John Howard Northrop

This chemist was the recipient of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with James Batcheller Sumner and Wendell Meredith Stanley. The trio was honored for its isolation crystallization and the study of enzyme proteins and viruses.
He was also a professor of Bacteriology and Medicinal Physics Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley. He was married to Louise Walker with whom he fathered two children, John and Alice. He went the path of suicide, ending his life on May 27, 1987, in Wickenburg Arizona.

2. Yasunari Kawabata

Kawabata's childhood was pretty stormy. He was orphaned at the tender age of four. He lost all close relatives by the time he had become eight.
He completed his tertiary education graduating in 1924 from Dai-ichi Kōtō-gakkō  ( First Upper School). His writing career was just beginning to bud, as he had started to catch the attention of Kikuchi Kan and other noted writers and editors. He received wide acclaim for his novel " The Dancing Girl Of Izu", one of the various literary works he turned out during his career. All succeeded both nationally and internationally.
Hr became the first Japanese Nobel Laurette in 1968. Special mention was made by the Noble Committee of his works " Snow Country" "Thousand Cranes" and " The Old Capital".
Kawabata died controversially in what looked like a suicide. He supposedly gassed himself as the evidence presented in the year 1972. Some of his close friends agree that his death was accidental.

1. Ernest Hemingway

Chances are that anyone reading this list has encountered one or more of the outstanding works produced by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was an American journalist novelist short story writer and also a sportsman.
Most of his works were produced between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s. He termed his economical and understated style the Iceberg Theory which bore a strong influence on fiction in the 20th century. His career produced about 7 novels 6 short story collections and 2 non-fiction works.

• 3 of his novels 4 of his short story collections, and 3 nonfiction works were published posthumously. Most of his works are today considered classics of American literature. Hemingway, unfortunately, committed suicide by a gunshot to the head