As of today, all of the 2021 Nobel Prizes have now been announced, and this post reviews the remarkable history of the Nobel Prize from 1901-2021 using maps, charts, and tables to help summarize my ten most interesting observations about the Nobel laureates by country, geographical region, gender, religion, research affiliation, and age.
According to the official Nobel website, 947 laureates from 80 different countries and 28 organizations have been awarded Nobel Prizes between 1901 and 2021 for a grand total of 975 Nobel recipients (individuals and organizations). Four individuals (Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger) and two organizations have been honored with Nobel prizes more than once (the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), which means that 943 unique individuals (885 men and 58 women) and 26 unique organizations have received the Nobel Prize in total.
Looking back on the 121-year history of Nobel Prizes, here are my top ten most interesting observations about Nobel Prizes and the 943 individual Nobel laureates based on the maps above, and the underlying data for laureates by country, gender, religion, research affiliation, and age.
1. Western Countries Dominate Nobel Awards. The top map above shows the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to laureates in eight geographical areas and one country (South Africa, since that one country represents most of the awards for Africa), based on this list of Nobel laureates by country. The list includes a total of 1,174 country affiliations for Nobel Prize recipients because many of the 943 individual Nobel laureates are listed for more than one country when the official Nobel website mentions multiple countries for recipients — usually the country of birth and the country where the laureate resides when the prize is awarded. For example, eight of the 13 Nobel laureates this year have dual-country affiliations: David Card for Economics (born in Canada, current affiliation is US), Joshua Angrist for Economics (born in the US, lived and taught in Isreal, current affiliation is the US), Guido Imbens for Economics (born in the Netherlands, current affiliation is the US), Maria Ressa for Peace (born in the Philippines, current affiliation is the US), David MacMillan for Chemistry (born in the US, current affiliation is the US), Syukuro Manabe for Physics (born in Japan, current affiliation is the US), Ardem Patapoutian for Medicine (born in Lebanon, current affiliation is the US), and Abdulrazak Gurnah for Literature (born in Tanzania, current affiliation is the UK).
One of the most interesting observations about the map above is that it shows that just two areas of the world: a) the US and Canada (424 laureates) and b) Western Europe (507 laureates) together represent 931 and nearly 80% of the 1,174 country affiliations associated with Nobel laureates since 1901. When the 15 Nobel laureates from Australia and New Zealand are included, the share of Nobel Prizes awarded to laureates in Western countries (946) increases to 80.6%.
The second map above is redrawn to reflect the relative size of each of eight major geographic areas based on their shares of Nobel Prizes received. The proportional map helps to further illustrate graphically the dominance of US/Canada and Western Europe for Nobel laureates – those two areas represent about 80% of the world map.
2. Top Ten Nobel-winning Countries. The United States is by far the world’s leading country for receiving Nobel Prizes with an astonishing 398 laureates over the last 121 years (and 34% of all 1,174 laureates), which is almost three times more than the second-highest ranked country — the United Kingdom, with 136 awards (see table above). Following the UK is Germany at No. 3 (111 awards), No. 4 France (70), and Sweden at No. 5 tied with Russia/Soviet Union (32), followed by No. 6 Japan with 29 Nobel Prizes, Canada with 28 awards, Switzerland with 27, and No. 10 Netherlands and Austria tied with 22 awards.
To put America’s dominance Nobel prize dominance in perspective, US laureates have received more Nobel awards (398) than the 381 prizes awarded to laureates in the next five countries combined (UK, Germany, France, Sweden, and Russia/Soviet Union). To put the dominance of the top two countries in perspective, laureates from the US and UK together have received 534 Nobel Prizes, which is almost half (45%) of all 1,174 laureates since 1901, and individuals in the top three countries (US, UK, and Germany) have together won 645 Nobel Prizes or nearly 55% of all awards.
Here’s a list of Nobel Prizes per capita via Wikipedia.
3. Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East together account for only 132 Nobel Prizes by country in total (11.2% of the 1,174 total), even though those areas together represent about 85% of the world’s population.
4. Asia. Laureates in Asia alone have received 65 Nobel prizes or 5.5% of the total prizes by country affiliation with nearly 55% of the world’s population. Nobel Prizes for Japanese laureates (29) represent slightly less than half of all Asian awards, followed by India (12) and China (8). Adjusted for the huge population of Asia (more than 4 billion), the number of Asian laureates per 100 million of 1.76 is actually slightly lower than the number of African laureates per 100 million of 1.83. In contrast, both the US/Canada and Western Europe have been awarded more than 100 Nobel Prizes per 100 million people,
5. Middle East. Countries in the Middle East have received 24 Nobel Prizes, with slightly more than half (13) of the awards in that region going to Israeli laureates. Of the 24 Nobel laureates from the Middle East, half (12) received either the literature (3) or peace prize (9). For the remaining 12 Nobel Prizes from that region in medicine, chemistry, physics, and economics, 9 of those laureates were Israeli, one was Egyptian (chemistry), one was Turkish (chemistry), and one was Lebanese (medicine).
6. Africa is the region of the world with the fewest Nobel Prize recipients – only 22 in total, and only 11 outside of South Africa, even though Africa has a population of about 1 billion. compared to only 1.83 Nobel Prizes awarded per 100 million Africans. Within Africa, Eastern Africa has the fewest Nobel laureates at only 0.46 per 100 million.
7. Jewish Nobel Laureates. Remarkably, Jews and people of Jewish descent represent less than 0.20% of the world’s population, but they represent 24.5% of all Nobel laureates (231 out of 944). This year there are five Jewish Nobel laureates: David Julius (medicine) and Joshua Angrist (economics).
Here are the Jewish shares of the six individual Nobel Prizes:
a. Economics: 35 out of 89 or 39.3% (196.5 times the Jewish share of the population)
b. Medicine: 57 out of 225, or 25.3% (126.5 times the Jewish share of the population)
c. Physics: 59 out of 218 or 27.1% (135.3 times their share of the population)
d. Chemistry: 35 out of 188 or 18.6% (93 times their share of the population)
e. Literature: 15 out of 118 or 12.7% (64 times their share of the population)
f. Peace: 9 out of 109 or 8.3% (41 times their share of the population)
8. Nobel Laureates by Gender. Since 1901 885 men have been awarded Nobel Prizes compared to only 58 female laureates (see chart above). Marie Curie was honored twice — she received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — so 58 individual women have received a total of 59 Nobel prizes. By percentage, men have received 93.8% of all Nobel awards to individuals compared to a 6.2% share for women, which is a male-female Nobel Prize ratio of 15.1-to-1. By field, women have received Nobel Prizes as follows:
a. Physics: 4
b. Chemistry: 7
c. Medicine: 12
d. Literature: 16
e. Peace: 18
f. Economics: 2
Note that 34 of the 58 female laureates received a Nobel Prize for either literature or peace, and those two categories together represent 58.6% of the total female Nobel laureates. This year, only one of the 13 laureates is female: Maria Ressa was awarded the Peace Prize. The record for the most Nobel prizes awarded to women in a single year was set in 2009 when there were five female laureates out of 13 total.
9. Research Affiliations of Nobel Laureates. The table above shows the top ten research affiliations of Nobel laureates at the time of the announcement.
10. Nobel Prizes by Age. Nobel Prizes have been awarded to laureates as young as 17-year old Malala Yousafzai (Peace prize in 2014) and as old as 97-year old John Goodenough, one of the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize for chemistry and one year older than the previous oldest laureate — Arthur Ashkin who shared the 2018 Nobel prize in physics at age 96. Based on the full list of laureates by age, the chart above shows the age distribution of the 943 Nobel laureates, whose median age was 60 years old when they received the Nobel award. By individual age, there are more laureates who received a Nobel Prize at age 61 or 63 years (33 individuals for each age) than any other age, followed by ages 56 years (32 laureates) and 60 years (31 laureates) and 64 years (30 laureates). The ages of this year’s 13 Nobel laureates are 53 (2), 54, 58, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 73 (2), 90 (2).
Bottom Line: The United States along with Western Europe to a lesser extent have come under intense criticism in recent years, especially from the left, for a variety of supposed sins: white supremacy, colonialism, toxic masculinity, systemic racism, patriarchy, and the list goes on. What doesn’t get nearly as much attention, appreciation, or recognition are the scientific discoveries that disproportionately reflect the significant contributions of male scientists in America and Western Europe. All seven of the science-related Nobel laureates this year in Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry are males, four in the US, two from Germany, and one each from Italy and the UK. And that domination of male Nobel laureates from the US and Western Europe has been consistent throughout the 121-year history of the merit-based Nobel prizes in the sciences.
It’s hard to know and measure exactly how much the ingenuity, genius, and innovative research of the hundreds of Nobel laureates have contributed to advancing our collective standards of living, but it’s likely significant. In an era that lacks any sense of gratitude, let me express my thanks to the contributions of Nobel scientists who were acknowledged for their talents in a merit-based competition that hasn’t yet been influenced by the growing woke mindset in the US obsessed with “equity” at the expense of merit. But it’s predictable that the Nobel Prizes in the sciences will eventually, if they aren’t already, be criticized for being “too male,” “too white,” and “too US-Euro centric,” with demands for greater “diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE).” If and when that happens, the integrity and tradition of Nobel Prizes in science will certainly DIE.
The post Looking back at the remarkable history of the Nobel Prize from 1901-2021 using maps, charts, and tables appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.