The 2023 Nobels were recently announced, marking 123 years of the most prestigious science prizes in the world. This is now a big enough dataset to do some statistics on. So let’s ask – what are the countries, institutions, and regions that win the science Nobels? That’s Physiology and Medicine, Chemistry, and Physics. The other three Nobel prizes are not nearly so well-regarded. In the span from 1901 to 2023 there have been 646 science prizes awarded to 642 people, with 4 people winning twice (Marie Curie, John Bardeen, K. Barry Sharpless and Frederick Sanger). Let’s first look at the coarsest division:

Countries Where Nobel Work Was Done

We can distinguish between where laureates are born, and where they did the work that wins them the prize. Laureates come from a wide range of the world – 51 countries in total, including ones as small as New Zealand and Slovenia. There are fewer places, though, where this level of work can be done – only 29 countries total. The top 10 account for >80% of the winners in each year:

The US (in blue) got huge after World War II in the 1940s and 50s, when refugees from all over the world came to the country. About 30% of US winners were not born there. The federal government also started putting serious money into Big Science in the 50s. Vannevar Bush had gone to Congress and said “You see this Bomb thing? There’s a lot more where that came from,” and he was right. The US was biggest in the 1990s, which was probably the peak of its world influence. The USSR had fallen, and the disgraceful Iraq War and Wall St Recession had yet to happen. About half of the total laureates did their work in the US, which isn’t too surprising given how big its population and resources are relative to the others.

Germany (in gray) dominated up until 1940, when they were distracted by other matters. The UK (in orange) has chugged along nicely throughout. France (in yellow) did well until the 1910s, when WW I wrecked the country. Japan (light blue) has done well recently. Switzerland probably gets the most per capita.

Now let’s look more closely at where this work was done:

Institutions Where Laureates Worked

Wikipedia has entries on all laureates, and in a nicely standardized format that lists all the institutions they have been associated with. When those pages are scraped, the top 20 institutions are these:

Number People	Institution	City
66	U Cambridge	Cambridge UK
44	UC Berkeley	Bay Area
42	U Chicago	Chicago
41	Columbia U	New York
35	Stanford U	Bay Area
31	Harvard U	Boston
28	Caltech	Los Angeles
25	MIT	Boston
23	MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology	Cambridge UK
22	Princeton U	Princeton
20	Rockefeller U	New York
20	Cornell U	Ithaca
20	U Oxford	Oxford
19	Yale U	New Haven
15	Bell Labs	Princeton
15	University College London	London
15	ETH Zürich	Zurich
15	U Berlin	Berlin
13	U Edinburgh	Edinburgh
13	U Manchester	Manchester

Cambridge rules! And is far ahead of its rival Oxford. In both of those I grouped all of their colleges together although they’re listed separately. I did break up the University of California into its separate schools since they’re quite different and spread out. UC as a whole has 102 people, which is more Nobels than any country besides the US.

It’s interesting that the top two, Cambridge and Berkeley, are both public universities. Then there are 11 private schools, and the publics appear again with University College London. The first non-school is the MRC Laboratory at #9, which was involved in the revolution of molecular genetics in the 1950s and 60s, including the discovery of the DNA double helix. The first corporate operation is Bell Labs, and its heyday is sadly long past. The next corporate entries are IBM and BASF.

In terms of other competitions, Harvard is also far ahead of its rival Yale, and ahead of that trade school down the river, MIT. Of the eight Ivy League schools, six make the list, missing only Brown and Dartmouth. All of the Ivy-Plus schools – MIT, Stanford, Chicago, Caltech, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, and WashU – also figure. The other big state schools are Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas A&M.

Now let’s look at where this work is done geographically:

Cities

The Institution list can also be broken down by region, usually in terms of what the nearest major city is. The exception is the Bay Area, whose major city is San Francisco, but spreads widely beyond that. The institutions there are still close enough for synergy, which is what matters. The top 10 here are:

Laureates who worked there	City	Top 3 Institutions	Number Other
108	Bay Area	USB 44; Stanford 35; UCSF 10	27
90	New York	Columbia 41; Rockefeller 20, Cold Spring Lab 5	24
89	Cambridge UK	U Cambridge 66; MRC Laboratory 23	0
80	Boston	Harvard 31; MIT 25; Harvard Med 5	19
61	London	U College 15; Imperial College 11; U London 6	29
52	Chicago	U Chicago 42; Northwestern 4; Argonne 2	4
52	Los Angeles	Caltech 28; UCLA 8, USC 6	14
51	Washington DC	Howard Hughes Med Inst 12; Johns Hopkins 8; Johns Hopkins Med 7	24
50	Princeton	Princeton U 22; Bell Labs 15; Institute for Advanced Study 10	3
33	Berlin	U Berlin 15; Kaiser Wilhelm Inst 3; Max Planck Med 2	13

This is not surprising overall. The top three countries for Nobels – the US, UK and Germany – are also the sites of the leading research regions. It’s a bit surprising to see that the major financial centers of New York and London are up there, but those are the heart cities of their nations. Yet it’s nice to see that small cities like Cambridge and Princeton are well represented. Most think that this kind of advanced work is best done away from the bustle of political and commercial life, and their presence is evidence of that.

Overall

As one would expect, Nobel-caliber work is done in the leading economic and cultural nations of the world: the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan. China is not contributing much yet, but will. There are seven Chinese-born laureates, although only one did their work there. Some small countries like Switzerland punch well above their weight. The same goes for leading institutions – the big ones are generally the old and famous ones like Cambridge and Harvard. Yet newer ones like Chicago and Caltech do well. The cities are also old and famous, but tiny Princeton sneaks in. Even the smaller countries and places can matter if they focus.