Nobel Prize Winners | Data Story

Nobel Prize

Where do the brightest minds in the world come from?

Awarded for the first time in 1901, after the will of Albert Nobel to celebrate the greatest ideas and inventions that helped humankind progress, it has been won by 881 individuals as of today. Obviously, what intrigues the most is knowing who won the prize and why but for us this is not enough: we wanted to discover where these people came from.

With the current technology and the wide variety of resources we could deploy, we conducted a research to gather data and consequentially use it to look at the countries who have given birth to more Nobel Prize winners.

The most noticeable trend that resulted from the study was that Europe and North America are the most awarded regions. Just think of all the technological progress and intellectual ferment in Europe in the XX century that brought to us inventions like x-rays by Wilhelm Rontgen, incredible social efforts like the foundation of the Red Cross by Jean Henri Dunant, or think of the huge investments in R&D done by the United States after WWII, especially in scientific fields.

-> Europe is the leading region with 54.6% of Nobel Prizes ever won, North America ranks second with 31.7%.
-> Asia, Africa & Middle East and Latin America follow with respectively 7.5%, 3.8% and 2.4%.

-> Top country in each region: United States (263), United Kingdom (98), Japan (24), South Africa (9) and Argentina (5).

,The US has conquered the first place as country with most Nobel Prize winners, currently 263 while the UK constitutes the 20.2% of the European region with 98.

But what if we adopt as criteria the per capita terms?
- Faroe Islands leads this special ranking with 1 laureate over a population of circa 48,000 inhabitants, Santa Lucia follows with 2 laureates.
- Notable mentions for Luxembourg with 3.5 Nobel Prizes per capita and Macedonia (FYROM) with only one Nobel Winner, Mother Teresa.

And what about categories?

The US once again leads the way in all categories except for one, literature.
Keep reading the more in depth analysis provided below!

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The US most successful areas of study are actually Medicine and Physiology which account for 29.7% of all laureates in these fields.

When it comes to Literature, France is the leading country with 12 Nobel Prizes won, awarding influential writers such as Romain Rolland and Jean-Paul Sartre among the others. Albert Camus despite being one of the most respected French writers was born in Algeria. Not only France but also Latin America has its strongest subject in literature with 6 Nobel Prizes awarded to Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa amongst all.

Going back to science-based awards, Europe covers a predominant role. More in particular, the UK has the majority of its winners in Chemistry and Medicine, as well as the most significant percentage in Physics in the continent: together with Germany reaches a top of 53% of the prizes in this category. (To absolutely remember Peter Higgs and its game-changing findings on the Boson particle.)

On the other hand, Nobel Prizes for Peace have mostly been awarded to Africa, especially in the period 1981-2000.
Public figures such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are on the top of this list since their social movements and human rights protecting activities have been fairly recognized.

The latest trend shows a prominent growth (27 prizes from 2001) by countries in the Asia-Pacific region with Japan leading the crew.
We cannot forget to mention the remarkable efforts of the Dalai Lama and those of Aung San Suu Kyi and Malala Yousafzai in Peace demonstrations.

You can't make the whole world happy at once...

The Nobel Prize surely has a great worldwide reputation but this does not mean it hasn't received critics through the years.

- Literature committee accused in 2009 to be eurocentric.
- Prizes cannot be given posthumous and to more than 3 individuals
- Allegation of politically biased decisions
(i.e. The incredible case of Ghandi who was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948 and never been awarded the Nobel prize for Peace)

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Amour Setter - Business Development amour@kalinax.com
Pedro Pereira - BI & Data Specialist pp@kalinax.com

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