Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates
(1901-2020)
Established by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895, the Nobel Prize is a set of annual awards bestowed upon individuals in recognition of cultural and/or scientific advances in six categories – Literature, Chemistry, Economics, Physics, World Peace, and Medicine.
Between 1901 and 2022, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to more than 900 individuals and organizations. At least 213 of them have been to people who are believed to be Jewish or raised Jewish.
Israel has produced a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners. In August 2015, Times Higher Education ranked Israel the fifth best performer this century based on the number of Nobel Prizes won as well as the significance and prestige of each one. The publication also ranked global universities based on Nobel Prize winners and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology placed eighth, higher on the list than Harvard and every British University.
Adolf Hitler forbade any Germans to accept the Nobel Prize after the 1935 Peace Prize was awarded to one of his political enemies, the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky.
Notes:
^ - Pasternak was forced to decline the prize by the Soviet Union.
* - Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
° - Anfinsen converted to Judaism later in life; Cori converted to Roman Catholicism.
** - Considers himself an atheist.
# - Israeli
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