Nobel Prize controversies been favored to receive the Prize, but a committee member was later quoted as saying that they would have been "too predictable, too popular." The 1974 prize was denied to Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and Saul Bellow in favor of a joint award for Swedish authors Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson—both Nobel judges and unknown outside their home country. Bellow won in 1976; neither Greene nor Nabokov took home the prize. The 1970 prize was awarded to Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who did not attend the ceremony in Stockholm for fear that the Soviet Union would prevent his return. His
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Prize medals, minted by Myntverket in Sweden, are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation. Each medal features an image of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse (front) side of the medal. The Nobel Prize medals for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature have identical obverses, showing the image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death (1833–1896). Before 1980, the medals were made of 23K gold; since then the medals are of 18K green gold, plated with 23K gold. The medal awarded by the Karolinska Institute displays an image of "the Genius of Medicine