2015’s Nobel Prize week wrapped up today with the announcement of the economics prize for Angus Deaton. And because these awards are open to anybody anywhere, questions of nationality can get interesting.
Where Nobel Prize winners were born, in one map
Susannah Locke/Vox
So which countries are racking up the most Nobels? If you do it by people’s country of birth, you end up with this:
(Note that this data set doesn’t include the roughly two dozen organizations that have won, including the 2015 Peace Prize for the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet.)
So, it’s pretty easy to see that the US comes out far on top, with 258 prizes. It’s followed by the UK, Germany, and France. And in terms of sheer numbers, no one else really compares. (Of course, some countries have a lot more people than others, so depending on your attitude, this might not seem like the most fair of rankings.)
The US dominates most types of Nobel Prizes, except the French have the most for literature. If you want to explore more, the Nobel Prize website has an interesting interactive that lets you sort by prize type and year — and gives a full readout of everybody's names.
But is birth country the most important thing? What if some candidates moved across the world to find a position where they could do their best work?
A few years ago, Jon Bruner at Forbes made a fascinating chart showing country at time of award. The general pattern is quite similar. And since he arranged it as a timeline, you get to see interesting trends, such as the decline of German dominance and rise of American dominance after World War II.
Correction: A previous version of this map mistakenly didn’t depict the Nobel Prizes of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark.
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