Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023,[1] at least 216 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. 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.[2][3][4][5]
Jews have been awarded all six of the Nobel Foundation's awards:[3]
"for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule"[30]
"for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies"[110]
"for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons"[169]
"for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"[174]
"for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effect"[184]
"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 based on this connection"[186]
"for his pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics"[194]
"for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"[214]
"as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories"[228]
"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"[241]
"for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science"[255]
"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"[257]
"for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy"[263]
"for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change"[271]
"for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty"[281]
"to honour a political act which called for great courage on both sides, and which has opened up opportunities for a new development towards fraternity in the Middle East."[336]
Literature: "for his notable achievement in both contemporary poetry and the field of the great Russian narrative tradition".[342] Pasternak initially accepted the award, but—after intense pressure from Soviet authorities—subsequently declined it.[343][344][345][346]
Jewish laureates per country
Below is a chart of all Jewish Nobel laureates per country (updated to 2024 laureates). Some laureates are counted more than once if have multiple citizenship.
The Israeli city of Rishon LeZion has an avenue dedicated to honoring all Jewish Nobel laureates. The street, called Tayelet Hatanei Pras Nobel (Nobel Laureates Boulevard/Promenade), has a monument with attached plaque for each Nobel laureate. The scientific adviser of the project was Prof. Israel Hanukoglu.[347]
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!
"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."
^ ab"Walter Kohn Autobiography". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2011-10-19. They are dominated by my vivid recollections of 1 1/2 years as a Jewish boy under the Austrian Nazi regime... On another level, I want to mention that I have a strong Jewish identity and – over the years – have been involved in several Jewish projects, such as the establishment of a strong program of Judaic Studies at the University of California in San Diego.
^ abcdefg"A remarkable week for Jewish Nobel Prize winners". The Jewish Chronicle. 10 October 2013. Archived from the original on 19 November 2013. Retrieved 13 October 2013. No less than six Jewish scientists were awarded Nobel Prizes this week... Belgian-born Francois Englert won the accolade in physics... Also this week, two American Jews were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine [...] James Rothman and Randy Schekman... Meanwhile, three Jewish-American scientists, Arieh Warshel, Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry... Karplus [...] fled the Nazi occupation of Austria as a child in 1938.
^Joan Comay; Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok (1995). Who's who in Jewish history: after the period of the Old Testament. Routledge. p. 264. ISBN0-415-12583-9. Moissan, whose mother was Jewish, [...]
Radu Balescu. "Ilya Prigogine: His Life, His Work", in Stuart Alan Rice (2007). Special volume in memory of Ilya Prigogine, John Wiley and Sons. p. 2. "In the history of science, there are few examples of such a flashing and immense ascent as that of Ilya Prigogine (Fig. 1). The little Russian Jewish immigrant arrived in Brussels at the age of 12..."
Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp (2009). Systems Thinkers. Springer. p. 277. "Prigogine was born in January 1917 in Moscow... His family 'had a difficult relationship with the new regime' (Prigogine 1977), being both Jewish and merchants...
Jean Maruani, Roland Lefebvre, Erkki Brändas (eds.) (2003). Advanced Topics in Theoretical Chemical Physics, Springer, p. xv. "Ilya Prigogine was born on January 25, 1917, in Moscow, Russia, the second boy in a middle-class, Jewish family."
^Herbert C. Brown, "Herbert C. Brown", in Tore Frängsmyr, Sture Forsén (1993). Chemistry, 1971–1980. World Scientific. p. 337. "My parents... came to London in 1908 as part of the vast Jewish immigration in the early part of this century."
^"Jerome Karle"Archived 2013-10-05 at the Wayback Machine, Profiles, Humanities and the Arts, City College of New York website. Retrieved September 10, 2011. "Jerome Karle is an American Jewish physical chemist who shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with a fellow CCNY classmate, Herbert Hauptman"
^Seymour "Sy" Brody. "Jerome Karle: Nobel Prize"Archived 2014-10-24 at the Wayback Machine, American Jewish Recipients of the Nobel Prize, Florida Atlantic University Libraries website. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
^István Hargittai, Magdolna Hargittai (2006). Candid Science VI. Imperial College Press. "Both Irwin Rose's parents came from secular Jewish families, on his maternal side, the Greenwalds originated from Hungary and on his paternal side, the Roses originated from the Odessa region of Russia."
^Joe Eskenazi. "Winning Nobel Prizes seems to run in one family's chemistry—and biology"Archived 2016-05-29 at the Wayback Machine.The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. October 12, 2006. "Arthur Kornberg – who still has his own lab at Stanford Medical School at age 88 – grew up in an Orthodox Brooklyn household, where Yiddish was the first language. His future wife, Sylvy Levy, also grew up Orthodox, but the couple raised their children in a fairly secular environment. Still, the family had a strong Jewish and pro-Israel identity, and Roger Kornberg is a consistent donor to the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation. Roger married an Israeli scientist, Yahli Lorch, a Stanford professor of structural biology, and they live almost half the year in their Jerusalem flat, where he leads his research team remotely via the Internet. "
Janice Arnold (2011-10-12). "Nobel laureate is pride of Sherbrooke Jews". Canadian Jewish News. "Shechtman was one of five Jews, including a former Montrealer, the late Ralph Steinman, to receive the prestigious prize for their scientific endeavours... Steinman and Bruce Beutler... won for their groundbreaking work in discoveries on the immune system. Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess, both American Jews... won the prize in physics."
Looks, Elka (2011-10-05). "Jews make strong showing among 2011 Nobel Prize winners". Haaretz. "Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman has made headlines at home for winning the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry, but he is not the only Jewish recipient... Ralph Steinman and Bruce Beutler were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discoveries on the immune system... Saul Perlmutter and Adam G. Riess, both American Jews, are two of the three Nobel Prize in physics winners... So far, five of the seven Nobel Prize winners this year are Jewish..."
^ abFred Skolnik, Michael Berenbaum (eds.) 2007. Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 13. Macmillan Reference USA / Keter Publishing House. p. 733. "Jewish scientists have participated in this problem from the early days of Joseph Erlanger's research on nerve conduction to Richard Axel's dissection of the pathways relevant to olfactory function."
^Peter Badge, Nikolaus Turner (2007). Nobel Faces: A Gallery of Nobel Prize Winners Wiley-VCH. p. 126. ISBN978-3-527-40678-4. "Axel was born to Polish Jewish refugees in New York in 1946"
Comay, Joan; Cohn-Sherbok, Lavinia (2002). Who's who in Jewish history: after the period of the Old Testament. Routledge. p. 362. ISBN978-0-415-26030-5.
Schlessinger, Bernard S.; Schlessinger, June H. (1996). The who's who of Nobel Prize winners, 1901–1995. Oryx Press. p. 201. ISBN978-0-89774-899-5. Parents: Father, Evgen Tamm; Mother, Olga Davidova Tamm. Nationality: Russian. Religion: Jewish.
^James Gleick. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Random House. 1995. p. 85. "Feynman, as a New York Jew distinctly uninterested in either the faith or sociology of Judaism..."
^Bernard S. Schlessinger, June H. Schlessinger (1996). The Who's Who of Nobel Prize Winners, 1901–1995. "Cooper, Leon Neil". Oryx Press. p. 605. "Religion: Jewish".
^Kurtz, Seymour (1985). Jewish America. McGraw-Hill. p. 244.
^"Scientists of Jewish heritage among trio to win Nobel prize for black hole finds". The Times of Israel. Retrieved December 5, 2022. In a 2007 interview with the Jerusalem Post, he said his grandmother "hid her origins and dissociated herself from her family, but we learned that she came from Russia and that her family name was Nathanson. Thus according to your rules, I guess I could be considered Jewish, even though I do not identify myself as one."
^Segel, Harold B. (2008). The Columbia Literary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945. Columbia University Press. p. 20. ISBN978-0-231-13306-7"... the few Hungarian writers who have attempted to deal with Hungary's role in the ware and the fate of the Hungarian Jewish population have been mostly Hungarian Jews. Certainly the best known, due to his receipt of the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002, is Imre Kertész (b. 1929)".
^Dagmar C. G. Lorenz (2007). Keepers of the Motherland: German texts by Jewish women writers. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 251–252. ISBN978-0-8032-2917-4. Jewish women's writing likewise employs satirical and grotesque elements when depicting non-Jews... Some do so pointedly, such as Ilse Aichinger, Elfriede Gerstl, and Elifriede Jelinek... Jelinek resumed the techniques of the Jewish interwar satirists... Jelinek stresses her affinity to Karl Krauss and the Jewish Cabaret of the interwar era... She claims her own Jewish identity as the daughter of a Holocaust victim, her father, thereby suggesting that there is a continuity of Vienna's Jewish tradition (Berka 1993, 137f.; Gilman 1995, 3).
^ abStephen Harlan Norwood, Eunice G. Pollack (2008). "American Jews in Economics". Encyclopedia of American Jewish History, Volume 1. ISBN978-1-85109-638-1. p. 719.
^Stephen Harlan Norwood, Eunice G. Pollack (2008). "American Jews in Economics". Encyclopedia of American Jewish History, Volume 1. ISBN978-1-85109-638-1. p. 720.
^ abStephen Harlan Norwood, Eunice G. Pollack (2008). "American Jews in Economics". Encyclopedia of American Jewish History, Volume 1. ISBN978-1-85109-638-1. p. 718.
^ abcdefghijStephen Harlan Norwood, Eunice G. Pollack (2008). "American Jews in Economics". Encyclopedia of American Jewish History, Volume 1. ISBN978-1-85109-638-1. p. 721.
^"Brief Bio – Robert J Aumann". Robert Aumann. Retrieved 2010-04-17. Robert Aumann was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1930, to a well-to-do orthodox Jewish family.
^ abcPervos, Stefanie (11/5/2007). "Nobel Prize winners have Jewish, Chicago connections". JUF News. "Three Jewish scholars, two with Chicago connections, were awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economic Science in October. Leonid Hurwicz, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota and former researcher at the University of Chicago; Roger B. Myerson, a University of Chicago professor; and Eric S. Maskin of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, were honored for their joint work on mechanism design theory."
^Silverstein, Marilyn. "Nobel winner who's at home with Einstein"Archived 2008-12-08 at the Wayback Machine, New Jersey Jewish News, November 8, 2007. "A native of New York, Maskin grew up in New Jersey, in a nonreligious Jewish home in the town of Alpine... But is he culturally Jewish? "Sure," he said. "It's a very rich culture, and I'm attracted to that side of it. I listen to klezmer — I'm actually a clarinetist myself. And there are certain Jewish foods I'm especially fond of — latkes, chopped liver, chicken soup with matza balls. I like to cook, and a lot of the things I cook have been handed down — a stuffed cabbage recipe I'm fond of, a meat pie recipe. I saw my grandmother do them."
^Paul Krugman (2003-10-28). "A Willful Ignorance". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-17. Sure enough, I was accused in various places not just of 'tolerance for anti-Semitism' (yes, I'm Jewish) [...]
^Abrams, Irwin (2001). The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–2001. Science History Publications. p. 78. ISBN978-0-88135-388-4
^Abrams, Irwin (2001). The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–2001. Science History Publications. p. 76. ISBN978-0-88135-388-4
^Prost, Antoine; Winter, Jay, eds. (2013), "A Jewish life", René Cassin and Human Rights: From the Great War to the Universal Declaration, Human Rights in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 301–340, doi:10.1017/CBO9781139506700.016, ISBN978-1-107-03256-9, retrieved 2023-10-06
^Abrams, Irwin (2001). The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–2001. Science History Publications. p. 220. ISBN978-0-88135-388-4
^Abrams, Irwin (2001). The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–2001. Science History Publications. p. 239. ISBN978-0-88135-388-4
^Abrams, Irwin (2001). The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–2001. Science History Publications. p. 266. ISBN978-0-88135-388-4
^"Nobel Prize Laureates Boulevard"Archived 2012-01-04 at the Wayback Machine, Structures, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Spring 2011, p. 4. "Dr. Hauptman interestingly is one of 160 Jewish Nobel Laureates... In honor of this distinction, there is a boulevard dedicated to Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates in a town called Kiryat Hatanei Pras Nobel (Nobel Prize Laureates' Town) outside of Tel Aviv, Israel. On this boulevard, a monument and plaque have been dedicated in Dr. Hauptman's honor."