Global InformationList of Jewish Nobel laureates information
Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023,[1] at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. For comparison, 65.4% of Nobel prize winners were either Christians or had a Christian background.[2] Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world's population, meaning their share of winners is 110 times their proportion of the world's population.[3][4][5][6]
Jews have been awarded all six of the Nobel Foundation's awards:[4]
- Chemistry: 36 (19% of total)
- Economics: 38 (41% of total)
- Literature: 16 (13% of total)
- Peace: 9 (8% of total)
- Physics: 56 (25% of total)
- Physiology or Medicine: 59 (26% of total)
Adolf von Baeyer, recipient of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was Jewish on his mother's side and is considered the first Jewish awardee.[7]
Jewish laureates Elie Wiesel and Imre Kertész survived the extermination camps during the Holocaust.[8] François Englert survived by being hidden in orphanages and children's homes.[9] Others, such as Hans Bethe, Walter Kohn, Otto Stern, Albert Einstein, Hans Krebs and Martin Karplus fled Nazi Germany to avoid persecution.[10][11][12] Still others, including Rita Levi-Montalcini, Herbert Hauptman, Robert Furchgott, Arthur Kornberg, and Jerome Karle, experienced significant antisemitism in their careers.[11][13]
Arthur Ashkin, a 96-year-old American Jew, was, at the time of his award, the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize.[14][15]
- ^ All Nobel Prizes
- ^ Baruch A. Shalev, 100 Years of Nobel Prizes (2003), Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, p. 57: between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 654 Laureates belong to 28 different religions. Most (65.4%) have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. ISBN 978-0935047370
- ^ "The Mystery of Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates". Jewish Nobel Prize Winners. ANU - Museum of the Jewish People. Retrieved 6 October 2023.
- ^ a b "Jewish Nobel Prize Winners". JINFO.ORG. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
Cited by JTA
- ^
- "A remarkable week for Jewish Nobelהש Prize winners". The Jewish Chronicle. October 10, 2013.
Jews have won more than 20 per cent of the 850-plus prizes awarded, despite making up just 0.2 per cent of world's population.
- "One-of-five Nobel Prize Laureates are Jewish". Israel High-Tech & Investment Report. December 2004. Retrieved 2010-02-15.
- Silverman, Anav (October 2012). "Jews make up less than 0.32% of mankind". ynetnews.
- Brooks, David (January 11, 2010). "The Tel Aviv Cluster". The New York Times. p. A23.
Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates. Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.
- Dobbs, Stephen Mark (October 12, 2001). "As the Nobel Prize marks centennial, Jews constitute 1/5 of laureates". J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Retrieved January 23, 2009.
Throughout the 20th century, Jews, more so than any other minority, ethnic or cultural group, have been recipients of the Nobel Prize – perhaps the most distinguished award for human endeavor in the six fields for which it is given. Remarkably, Jews constitute almost one-fifth of all Nobel laureates. This, in a world in which Jews number just a fraction of 1 percent of the population.
- Ted Falcon; David Blatner (2001). "28". Judaism for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.
Similarly, because Jews make up less than a quarter of one percent of the world's population, it's surprising that over 20 percent of Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews or people of Jewish descent.
- Lawrence E. Harrison (2008). The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It. Oxford University Press. p. 102.
That achievement is symbolized by the fact that 15 to 20 percent of Nobel Prizes have been won by Jews, who represent two tenths of one percent of the world's population.
- Jonathan B. Krasner; Jonathan D. Sarna (2006). The History of the Jewish People: Ancient Israel to 1880s America. Behrman House, Inc. p. 1.
These accomplishments account for 20 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded since 1901. What a feat for a people who make up only .2 percent of the world's population!
- "A remarkable week for Jewish Nobelהש Prize winners". The Jewish Chronicle. October 10, 2013.
- ^ *Schuster, Ruth (2013-10-09). "Why do Jews win so many Nobels?". Retrieved 2018-03-17.
- "Why have Jews won Nobel Prizes disproportionately? - Prof. Robert Aumann (Nobel Prize Economist)". YouTube. 2017-04-17. Retrieved 2018-03-17.
- Pontz, Zach (2013-10-29). "Richard Dawkins Perplexed by High Number of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners". Algemeiner.com. Retrieved 2018-03-17.
- "Jews rank high among winners of Nobel, but why not Israelis", J. The Jewish News of Northern California, October 25, 2002. "There are three central theories given for Jewish academic achievement, according to Shulamit Volkov, professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of "The Magic Circle: Germans, Jews and Anti-Semites." The first theory says that Jews are cleverer than others, a theory dismissed by Volkov and other serious academics. The second theory, proposed first by an American sociologist in 1919, holds that because Jews were on the margins of society they were forced to excel. The third and more common explanation, says Volkov, states that generations of Jewish Orthodox learning later translated brilliantly into secular learning."
- Noah Efron, "The Real Reason Why Jews Win So Many Nobel Prizes", Haaretz, October 21, 2013.
- Mark Mietkiewicz, "Nobel Prize and the Jews", Canadian Jewish News, December 10, 2018.
- Raphael Patai, The Jewish Mind, Wayne State University Press, 1996, pp. 339-371, 547-548.
- ^ Pulzer, Peter G. J. (1991). Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority, 1848-1933. Wayne State University Press. p. 110. ISBN 0814331300. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
- ^ "Winfrey selects Wiesel's 'Night' for book club", Associated Press, January 16, 2006.
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Hargittai2003p112was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Hilary Brueck, "The world's oldest Nobel Prize winner, a 96-year-old physicist, says his new invention will give everyone in the world clean, cheap energy", Business Insider, January 26, 2019.
- ^ "The Latest: US scientist, 96, is oldest to win Nobel Prize", Associated Press, October 2, 2018.