Nobel

Nobel

Some recent numbers are out about the Nobel Prize and here are some interesting specifics.

There have now been a total of 896 individuals (847 men and 49 women) from 68 different countries who have received a Nobel prize from 1901 to 2017.

Just two areas of the world, the US and Canada (396 awards) and  Western Europe (487 awards), together represent the vast majority of the 1,105 country affiliations associated with Nobel laureates--nearly 80% of the total number of 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 increases to more than 81%.

By country:

.

The United States is by far the world’s leading country for receiving Nobel prizes with an astonishing 371 total awards over the last 117 years (an average of more than 3 per year, even though there were some years without Nobel prizes, mostly during WWI and WWII), and almost three times more than the second-highest ranked country — the United Kingdom, with 125 awards

Countries in the Middle East have received 22 Nobel prizes, with more than half (12) of the awards going to Israel. Of the 22 Nobel laureates from the Middle East, more than half (12) received the literature (4) and Peace prize (8). For the remaining 10 Nobel prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics, 8 of those laureates were Israeli and one was from Egypt (chemistry) and one is Turkish (chemistry).

Africa is the region of the world with the fewest Nobel prizes – only 17 in total, and only 6 outside of South Africa, even though Africa has a population of about 1 billion. Adjusted for population, both the US/Canada and Western Europe have been awarded more than 100 Nobel prizes per 100 million people, compared to only 1.41 Nobel prizes awarded per 100 million Africans. As mentioned above, Africa (1.41) is just slightly behind Asia (1.45) for laureates per 100 million population.

Jews and people of Jewish descent represent less than 0.20% of the world’s population, but they represent almost 22% of all Nobel laureates (195 out of 896).

Men have been awarded 847 Nobel prizes compared to only 48 female laureates. By percentage, men have received 94.5% of all Nobel awards to individuals compared to 5.5% for women, which is a male-female Nobel prize ratio of 17.3-to-1. By field, women have received Nobel prizes as follows (total sums to 49 because Marie Curie received Nobel prizes in both physics and chemistry):

30 of the 48 female laureates received a Nobel prize for either literature or peace, and those two categories together represent 62.5% of the total female Nobel laureates.

By top research affiliations:

 

And by age: