The Armenian is not a Nobel Prize Winner

On August 10, an article was published on the Public Radio website about the Armenian “Nobel Prize-winner taxi driver”, which tells the story of Martiros Tsarukyan, a former employee of the Ministry of Nature Protection. A similar article was published in May 2018 by araratnews.am.

Both in the title and in the article Martiros Tsarukyan has twice been introduced as a “Nobel Prize winner” by the author. In the first case the author asks him, “Are your customers informed  that they are in the car with a Nobel Prize-winner?” In the second case, the author asks: “How did you feel when you found out that you were a Nobel Prize winner?”

The Reality

 The article states twice that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), not to private individuals. However, in contrast to the above-mentioned statement, Tsarukyan is introduced as a Nobel Prize winner.

In 2008, President of the IPCC R. K. Pachauri sent a letter to Tsarukyan, which is posted on the Public Radio website. It is mentioned in the letter that a copy of Nobel Prize was sent to Martiros Tsarukyan, as he and his colleagues have their share in earning the award and contributed to the work of the IPCC.

the Public Radio article also includes a copy of the 2007 Nobel  Prize and an IPCC Certificate, where it is  also noted that Tsarukyan had his contribution in earning the IPCC’s Nobel Prize.

IPCC’s  clarification: 

Back in 2012, the IPCC issued an announcement stating that the organization was awarded the award, not any person(s) who had worked with the IPCC.

“Thus it is wrong to consider that any official or scientist who has worked on IPCC reports is a Nobel Prize winner. It would be correct to characterize the scholars who had worked on the reports of the IPCC’s AR4 or the ones published earlier as follows : “X person contributed to the IPCC reports that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize”, states the announcement.

It is noteworthy that last year the globalnews.ca website referred to a similar case. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has publicly stated twice that a member of his government, the Minister of Science, is a Nobel Prize winner, however, he, like Tsarukyan, contributed to the IPCC reports and did not personally receive the prestigious award.

Hovhannes Nazaretyan