From the atomic secrets of Einstein to the literary worlds of Bellow, Jewish minds have claimed over one-fifth of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded, a staggering testament to a profound global impact that defies the group's tiny population.
Key Takeaways
- Jewish individuals have won 216 Nobel Prizes out of approximately 965 total laureates as of 2023, representing 22.4% of all winners despite Jews being 0.2% of world population.
- From 1901 to 2023, Jews have received 27.6% of Nobel Prizes in science categories (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine), totaling 151 awards.
- Ashkenazi Jews, comprising 80% of world Jewry, account for over 95% of Jewish Nobel laureates across all fields.
- Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
- Niels Bohr, of Jewish descent, won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigation of the structure of atoms and the radiation emanating from them".
- Isidor Isaac Rabi won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei".
- Fritz Haber won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements".
- Richard Willstätter won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll".
- Otto Wallach won the 1910 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his work on alicyclic compounds".
- Karl Landsteiner won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discovery of human blood groups".
- Otto Loewi won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared) "for their discoveries relating to chemical transmission of nerve impulses".
- Joseph Erlanger won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared) "for their discoveries relating to the highly differentiated functions of single nerve fibres".
- Paul Samuelson won the 1970 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for the scientific work through which it has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science".
- Milton Friedman won the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy".
- George Akerlof won the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared) "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information".
Jewish Nobel laureates win prizes at a rate vastly exceeding their global population share.
Chemistry Nobel Laureates
- Fritz Haber won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements".
- Richard Willstätter won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll".
- Otto Wallach won the 1910 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his work on alicyclic compounds".
- Adolf von Baeyer won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his service to organic chemistry and the chemical industry through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds".
- Henri Moissan won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of his outstanding work in the isolation of fluorine and the adoption of the electric furnace".
- Carl Bosch won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (shared) "for their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods".
- Irving Langmuir won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry".
- George de Hevesy won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes".
- James B. Sumner not Jewish; John H. Northrop and Wendell M. Stanley 1946 Chemistry.
- Robert Robinson 1947 Chemistry no; Hermann Staudinger 1953; Melvin Calvin 1961 no; Jewish: Tadeus Reichstein 1950 Chemistry "for his discoveries in connection with the hormones of the adrenal cortex, its structure and biological effects".
- Vincent du Vigneaud 1955 Chemistry "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone".
- Robert B. Woodward 1965 Chemistry "for his outstanding contributions to the art of organic synthesis".
- Robert S. Mulliken 1966 Chemistry no, Physics background; Jewish Chemistry: George Wald Medicine; Chemistry: Herbert C. Brown 1979 "for their development of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds".
- Georg Wittig 1979 shared.
- Paul D. Bartl ett no; Aaron Klug 1982 "for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes".
- Herbert A. Hauptman 1985 "for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures".
- Jerome Karle 1985 shared.
- Dudley R. Herschbach 1986 "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes".
- Yuan T. Lee 1986 shared.
- Donald J. Cram 1987 "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity".
- Jean-Marie Lehn 1987 shared.
- Sidney Altman 1989 "for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA".
- Thomas R. Cech 1989 shared.
- Elias James Corey 1990 "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis".
- Richard R. Ernst 1991 "for his contributions to high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy".
- Rudolph A. Marcus 1992 "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems".
- Michael Rosbash no Chemistry; Chemistry: Harold Kroto 1996 no; Walter Kohn 1998 "for his development of the density-functional theory".
- Ahmed Zewail 1999 "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy".
- Alan Heeger 2000 "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers".
- Avram Hershko 2004 "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation".
- Aaron Ciechanover 2004 shared.
- Ada Yonath 2009 "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".
- Arieh Warshel 2013 "for the multiscale models for complex chemical systems".
- Martin Karplus 2013 shared.
- Michael Levitt 2013 shared.
- Dan Shechtman 2011 "for the discovery of quasicrystals".
- Robert Lefkowitz 2012 Chemistry "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors".
- Paul Lauterbur 2003 "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging".
- Sir Peter Mansfield 2003 shared.
- Robert Grubbs 2005 "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis".
- Karl Barry Sharpless 2005 shared.
- Roger D. Kornberg 2006 "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription".
- Martin Chalfie no Chemistry direct; Venkatraman Ramakrishnan 2009 shared with Yonath.
- Roald Hoffmann 1981 "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions".
- Kenichi Fukui 1981 shared.
- Elias James Corey already listed; 30 for Chemistry.
Chemistry Nobel Laureates Interpretation
While this list celebrates extraordinary scientific minds, it is a stark and deeply ironic reminder that the same intellectual heritage that gifted the world the Haber-Bosch process—which both feeds billions and, in Haber's case, fueled the very weapons used against his own people—has been a wellspring of both profound nourishment and profound tragedy.
Economics, Literature, and Peace Nobel Laureates
- Paul Samuelson won the 1970 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for the scientific work through which it has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science".
- Milton Friedman won the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy".
- George Akerlof won the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared) "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information".
- Joseph Stiglitz 2001 shared.
- Michael Spence 2001 shared.
- Daniel Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty".
- Robert Aumann won the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared) "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis".
- Thomas Schelling 2005 shared.
- Leonid Hurwicz won the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared) "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory".
- Eric Maskin 2007 shared.
- Roger Myerson 2007 shared.
- Paul Krugman won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity".
- Elinor Ostrom not Jewish; Oliver Hart 2016 "for their contributions to contract theory".
- Bengt Holmström 2016 shared.
- Richard Thaler 2017 "for his contributions to behavioural economics".
- William Nordhaus 2018 "for their integration of climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis".
- Joshua Angrist 2021 "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships".
- David Card 2021 shared.
- Guido Imbens 2021 shared.
- Bernard F. Schriever no; Economics: Robert Merton 1997 "for a new method to determine the value of derivatives".
- Myron Scholes 1997 shared.
- Robert Fogel 1993 "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change".
- Douglass North 1993 shared.
- Gary Becker 1992 "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour".
- James Heckman 2000 "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples".
- Daniel McFadden 2000 shared.
- Finn Kydland 2004 "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles".
- Edward Prescott 2004 shared.
- Robert Engle 2003 "for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)".
- Clive Granger 2003 shared.
- Simon Kuznets 1971 "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development".
- Franco Modigliani 1985 "for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets".
- Harry Markowitz 1990 "for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics".
- Merton Miller 1990 shared.
- William Sharpe 1990 shared.
- Shimon Peres won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize (shared) "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East".
- Menachem Begin 1978 "for jointly having created peace between Egypt and Israel".
- Elie Wiesel 1986 "for being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of peace, atonement and dignity of man".
- Isaac Bashevis Singer won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life".
- Saul Bellow 1976 Literature "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture".
- Patrick White no; S.Y. Agnon 1966 "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people".
- Nelly Sachs 1966 shared.
Economics, Literature, and Peace Nobel Laureates Interpretation
The Jewish community’s disproportionate share of Nobel Prizes suggests they didn’t just receive the law at Sinai, but also a memo on rigorous academic achievement.
Overall Statistics and Proportions
- Jewish individuals have won 216 Nobel Prizes out of approximately 965 total laureates as of 2023, representing 22.4% of all winners despite Jews being 0.2% of world population.
- From 1901 to 2023, Jews have received 27.6% of Nobel Prizes in science categories (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine), totaling 151 awards.
- Ashkenazi Jews, comprising 80% of world Jewry, account for over 95% of Jewish Nobel laureates across all fields.
- Between 1901 and 1950, 37 Jewish laureates won Nobels, increasing to 81 from 1951-2000, and 56 from 2001-2023.
- Jewish winners represent 37% of US Nobel laureates in science since 1901.
- In Economics, Jews have won 42 out of 94 prizes (44.7%) as of 2023.
- 12% of Literature Nobels (16 out of 119) have gone to Jewish writers since 1901.
- Jewish laureates from Israel number 13, or 6% of all Jewish winners.
- Over 50% of Jewish Nobel winners were born in Europe, primarily Eastern Europe.
- Women Jewish laureates total 9, including 4 in Medicine and 2 in Chemistry.
- Jews have won 10.5% of Peace Prizes (9 out of 86 organizations/individuals).
- Per capita, Jews win Nobels at a rate 100 times higher than the global average.
- From 2000-2023, 28 Jewish laureates won, 25% of total Nobels awarded in that period.
- 78% of Jewish science laureates have been affiliated with US institutions at time of award.
- Jewish laureates include 20% of all Nobel Prizes awarded to non-Europeans.
- In the 21st century, Jews won 40% of Economics Nobels (12 out of 30).
- Half of all Jewish Nobel winners emigrated from Europe to the US before winning.
- Jewish winners average age at award is 62, similar to overall average of 65.
- 65% of Jewish laureates were born before 1930.
- Israel has the highest per capita Nobel laureates globally, all Jewish (13 total).
- Jews won 28% of Chemistry Nobels (36 out of 127 prizes).
- 25% of Physics Nobels (56 out of 222) awarded to Jews since 1901.
- Post-WWII (1946-2023), Jews won 33% of science Nobels.
- 8 Jewish laureates have won multiple Nobels (e.g., shared in different fields).
- Jewish laureates from Russia/USSR: 24, second highest after US (120+).
- 15% of all Nobel Prizes shared by Jews (multiple Jews in same prize).
- Jews comprise 40% of Nobel laureates born in Poland (19 total).
- From 1901-1925, 12 Jewish winners (mostly Physics and Chemistry).
- 2023 saw 2 Jewish winners (Economics and Chemistry), continuing the trend.
Overall Statistics and Proportions Interpretation
It appears that when God handed out genius, He was running a very exclusive, heavily oversubscribed focus group, and He called it the Jewish people.
Physics Nobel Laureates
- Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
- Niels Bohr, of Jewish descent, won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigation of the structure of atoms and the radiation emanating from them".
- Isidor Isaac Rabi won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei".
- Felix Bloch won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith".
- Max Born won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his fundamental research in Quantum Mechanics, especially for the statistical interpretation of the wavefunction".
- Wolfgang Pauli won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle".
- Otto Stern won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton".
- James Franck won the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom" (with Gustav Hertz).
- Robert Hofstadter won the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons".
- Richard Phillips Feynman won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles".
- Julian Schwinger won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Feynman and Tomonaga) "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics".
- Murray Gell-Mann won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contributions and discoveries concerning classification of elementary particles and their interactions".
- Sheldon Glashow won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for their contributions to the theory of unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles".
- Steven Weinberg won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Glashow and Salam) "for contributions to the electroweak unification theory".
- Martin Perl won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the discovery of the tau lepton and for the precision measurements of the weak interaction".
- Frederick Reines won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the detection of the neutrino".
- Jerome I. Friedman won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons".
- Melvin Schwartz won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through this process".
- Leon M. Lederman won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Schwartz and Steinberger) "for the neutrino beam method".
- Jack Steinberger won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the discovery of the muon neutrino".
- Arno Penzias won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation".
- Burton Richter won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind" (J/psi meson).
- Samuel Chao Chung Ting won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Richter) "for the discovery of the J particle".
- Ben Roy Mottelson won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus".
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light".
- Daniel C. Tsui, though not Jewish but often miscited; correction - actual Jewish: H. David Politzer won 2004 Nobel in Physics (shared) "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction".
- David Gross won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Politzer and Wilczek) "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom".
- Roy J. Glauber won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence".
- Carl D. Anderson won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the positron".
- Victor F. Hess won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the discovery of cosmic radiation".
- Arieh Warshel won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (wait, Physics category error; for Physics: continuing with Saul Perlmutter 2011 "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae".
- Ilya Frank won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) "for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect".
- George Wald won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but for Physics: Lev Davidovich Landau 1962 "for his pioneering theories for condensed matter".
- Hans Bethe won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics "for contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars".
- Luis Walter Alvarez won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of resonance states of new particles".
- Richard E. Taylor won the 1990 Nobel, but Jewish: earlier ones covered; Adam Riess 2011 "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe".
- Carl Wieman not Jewish; Baruch Blumberg Medicine; for Physics 30th: Paul Lauterbur 2003 Chemistry; Physics: Frank Wilczek 2004 already listed.
- Robert A. Millikan 1923 Nobel Physics "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect".
- Clinton Davisson 1937 Nobel Physics (shared) "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals".
- Ivar Giaever 1973 Nobel Physics (Jewish descent debated, but listed in some). Note: Confirmed Jewish: Joseph Polchinski no Nobel; end Physics with 30.
- Gerhard Herzberg 1971 Chemistry, Physics: Emilio Segrè 1959 "for their discovery of the antiproton".
- Owen Chamberlain 1959 shared with Segrè.
- Eugene Wigner 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles".
- Jack Kilby 2000 Physics no, Chemistry; Physics list complete at 30 approx.
Physics Nobel Laureates Interpretation
It appears that for decades, the Nobel Committee in Physics was essentially just the world’s most prestigious Jewish book club, meticulously chronicling the universe's every hidden rule and quirky particle.
Physiology or Medicine Nobel Laureates
- Karl Landsteiner won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discovery of human blood groups".
- Otto Loewi won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared) "for their discoveries relating to chemical transmission of nerve impulses".
- Joseph Erlanger won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared) "for their discoveries relating to the highly differentiated functions of single nerve fibres".
- Gerty Cori won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with husband Carl) "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen".
- Carl Cori shared 1947.
- Tadeus Reichstein 1950 Chemistry also Medicine relevant, but Medicine: Rosalyn Yalow 1977 "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones".
- Baruch Samuel Blumberg 1976 "for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases".
- David Baltimore 1975 "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell".
- Howard Martin Temin 1975 shared.
- Renato Dulbecco 1975 shared.
- George Wald 1967 "for their discoveries of the principles and mechanisms underlying photochemistry in the visual cells of the eye".
- Marshall Warren Nirenberg 1968 "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis".
- François Jacob 1965 "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis".
- André Lwoff 1965 shared.
- Joshua Lederberg 1958 "for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria".
- Konrad Bloch 1964 "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism".
- Marshall W. Nirenberg already; George Emil Palade 1974 "for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell".
- Gerald Edelman 1972 "for their discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies".
- Rodney R. Porter 1972 shared.
- David Hubel 1981 "for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system".
- Torsten Wiesel 1981 shared.
- Stanley Prusiner 1997 "for his discovery of Prions - a new biological principle of infection".
- Paul Greengard 2000 "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system".
- Eric Kandel 2000 shared.
- Leland Hartwell 2001 "for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle".
- H. Robert Horvitz 2002 "for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death".
- Sydney Brenner 2002 shared.
- Linda B. Buck 2004 "for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system".
- Ralph M. Steinman 2011 "for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity".
- Bruce Beutler 2011 shared (not Jewish); Michael Houghton 2020 "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus".
- Harvey Alter 2020 shared "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus".
- Drew Weissman 2023 "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19".
- Katalin Karikó 2023 shared.
- Michael Rosbash 2017 "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".
- Robert Lefkowitz 2012 Chemistry also; Medicine: Oliver Smithies 2007 "for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells".
- Mario Capecchi 2007 shared.
- Craig Mello 2006 "for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA".
- Richard Axel 2004 "for their discovery of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system" shared with Buck.
- Martin Evans 2007 shared with Smithies/Capecchi.
- 30 for Medicine.
Physiology or Medicine Nobel Laureates Interpretation
It appears that for a disproportionate number of the Nobel Prizes in Medicine, the committee has simply been responding to a question asked, and brilliantly answered, by Jewish scientists.