# List of Swiss Nobel laureates

The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed on "those who conferred the greatest benefit on humankind" in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences, instituted by Alfred Nobel's last will, which specified that a part of his fortune be used to create the prizes. Each laureate (recipient) receives a gold medal, a diploma and a sum of money, which is decided annually by the Nobel Foundation. They are widely recognized as one of the most prestigious honours awarded in the aforementioned fields.
First instituted in 1901, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to a total of 965 individuals and 27 organizations as of 2023. Among them, 28 Swiss nationals have been honored with the Nobel Prize. Additionally, two laureates acquired Swiss citizenship through naturalization after the award: Wolfgang Pauli and Jack Steinberger.
Nine organizations headquartered in Switzerland have received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded twice, and the International Committee of the Red Cross three times. Five of these organizations were also founded in Switzerland, and eight of them had their headquarters in Geneva, a city hosting more than 40 international organizations and 750 non-governmental organizations.
The first Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1901, went to the Swiss humanitarian Henry Dunant. The latest Swiss laureates are Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019. The 28 prizes are distributed as follows: eight for medicine, eight for chemistry, seven for physics, three for peace, and two for literature. No Swiss national has yet received a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Switzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita. Several factors have been suggested as possible explanation, including large public funding for research, the presence of highly ranked universities such as ETH Zürich and EPFL, and the neutrality of Switzerland in the two World Wars, which attracted scientists from abroad. The Nobel Prize has also been often recognized as being biased towards Western countries. According to Nobel laureate Werner Arber, the large number of awards to Swiss nationals is "likely a statistical anomaly", while Richard R. Ernst believes the number of Swiss laureates will keep increasing as the country still attracts talent.

## Laureates

Swiss Nobel laureates :
| Year | Laureate | Born | Died | Field | Rationale |
| 1901 | Henry Dunant, co-founder of the Red Cross | 8 May 1828 in Geneva | 30 October 1910 in Heiden | Peace | "for his humanitarian efforts to help wounded soldiers and create international understanding" prize shared with Frédéric Passy |
| 1902 | Charles Albert Gobat, politician and director of the Permanent International Peace Bureau | 21 May 1843 in Tramelan | 16 March 1914 in Bern | Peace | "for his eminently practical administration of the Inter-Parliamentary Union" prize shared with Élie Ducommun |
| 1902 | Élie Ducommun, peace activist and director of the Permanent International Peace Bureau | 19 February 1833 in Geneva | 7 December 1906 in Bern | Peace | "for his untiring and skilful directorship of the Bern Peace Bureau" prize shared with Charles Albert Gobat |
| 1909 | Emil Theodor Kocher, physician who introduced scientific methods in surgery | 28 August 1841 in Bern | 27 July 1917 in Bern | Physiology or Medicine | "for his work on the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid gland" |
| 1913 | Alfred Werner, professor at the University of Zurich | 12 December 1866 in Mulhouse, France acquired Swiss citizenship in 1894 | 15 November 1919 in Zurich | Chemistry | "in recognition of his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules by which he has thrown new light on earlier investigations and opened up new fields of research especially in inorganic chemistry" |
| 1919 | Carl Spitteler, poet and writer | 24 April 1845 in Liestal | 29 December 1924 in Lucerne | Literature | "in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring" |
| 1920 | Charles Édouard Guillaume, physicist, head of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures | 15 February 1861 in Fleurier | 13 June 1938 in Sèvres, France | Physics | "in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys" |
| 1921 | Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity | 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Germany acquired Swiss citizenship in 1901 | 18 April 1955 in Princeton, USA | Physics | "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" |
| 1937 | Paul Karrer, organic chemist known for his contributions on vitamins | 21 April 1889 in Moscow, Russia | 18 June 1971 in Zurich | Chemistry | "for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2" prize shared with Norman Haworth |
| 1939 | Leopold Ružička, chemist, professor at ETH Zurich | 13 September 1887 in Vukovar, Austria-Hungary acquired Swiss citizenship in 1917 | 26 September 1976 in Zurich | Chemistry | "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes" prize shared with Adolf Butenandt |
| 1946 | Hermann Hesse, poet, novelist and painter | 2 July 1877 in Calw, Germany acquired Swiss citizenship in 1924 | 9 August 1962 in Montagnola | Literature | "for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style" |
| 1948 | Paul Hermann Müller, chemist at J. R. Geigy AG who synthesized DDT | 12 January 1899 in Olten | 12 October 1965 in Basel | Physiology or Medicine | "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods" |
| 1949 | Walter Rudolf Hess, physiologist and professor at the University of Zurich who mapped areas of the brain | 17 March 1881 in Frauenfeld | 12 August 1973 in Ascona | Chemistry | "for his discovery of the functional organization of the interbrain as a coordinator of the activities of the internal organs" prize shared with Egas Moniz |
| 1950 | Tadeusz Reichstein, chemist and professor at the University of Basel who contributed to the isolation of cortisone | 20 July 1897 in Wloclawek, Poland acquired Swiss citizenship in 1914 | 1 August 1996 in Basel | Physiology or Medicine | "for their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects" prize shared with Edward Calvin Kendall and Philip Showalter Hench |
| 1951 | Max Theiler, South African-American virologist and physician | 30 January 1899 in Pretoria, South Africa | 11 August 1972 in New Haven, USA | Physiology or Medicine | "for his discoveries concerning yellow fever and how to combat it" |
| 1952 | Felix Bloch, physicist, first director-general of CERN and among the developers of nuclear magnetic resonance | 23 October 1905 in Zurich | 10 September 1983 in Zurich | Physics | "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith" prize shared with Edward Mills Purcell |
| 1957 | Daniel Bovet, pharmacologist who discovered antihistamines | 23 March 1907 in Neuchâtel | 8 April 1992 in Rome, Italy | Physiology or Medicine | "for his discoveries relating to synthetic compounds that inhibit the action of certain body substances, and especially their action on the vascular system and the skeletal muscles" |
| 1975 | Vladimir Prelog, organic chemist, professor at ETH Zurich | 23 July 1906 in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary acquired Swiss citizenship in 1959 | 7 January 1998 in Zurich | Chemistry | "for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions" prize shared with John Cornforth |
| 1978 | Werner Arber, microbiologist and geneticist, professor at the University of Geneva and Basel | 3 June 1929 in Gränichen | — | Physiology or Medicine | "for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics" prize shared with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton O. Smith |
| 1986 | Heinrich Rohrer, physicist, IBM Fellow | 6 June 1933 in Buchs | 16 May 2013 in Wollerau | Physics | "for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope" prize shared with Gerd Binning and Ernst Ruska |
| 1987 | K. Alex Müller, physicist, IBM Fellow | 20 April 1927 in Basel | 9 January 2023 in Zurich | Physics | "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials" prize shared with J. Georg Bednorz |
| 1991 | Richard R. Ernst, physical chemist, professor at ETH Zurich | 14 August 1933 in Winterthur | 4 June 2021 in Winterthur | Chemistry | "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy" |
| 1992 | Edmond H. Fischer, biochemist, professor at the University of Washington | 6 April 1920 in Shanghai, China acquired Swiss citizenship in 1947 | 27 August 2021 in Seattle, USA | Physiology or Medicine | "for their discoveries concerning reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism" prize shared with Edwin G. Krebs |
| 1996 | Rolf M. Zinkernagel, professor of experimental immunology at the University of Zurich | 6 January 1944 in Basel | — | Physiology or Medicine | "for their discoveries concerning the specificity of the cell mediated immune defence" prize shared with Peter C. Doherty |
| 2002 | Kurt Wüthrich, chemist and biophysicist, professor at ETH Zurich and The Scripps Research Institute | 4 October 1938 in Aarburg | — | Chemistry | "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution" prize shared with John B. Fenn and Koichi Tanaka |
| 2017 | Jacques Dubochet, biophysicist, professor at the University of Lausanne | 8 June 1942 in Aigle | — | Chemistry | "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" prize shared with Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson |
| 2019 | Michel Mayor, astrophysicist, professor at the University of Geneva | 12 January 1942 in Lausanne | — | Physics | "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star" prize shared with Jim Peebles and Didier Queloz |
| 2019 | Didier Queloz, astronomer, professor at the University of Cambridge and Geneva | 23 February 1966 in Geneva | — | Physics | "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star" prize shared with Jim Peebles and Michel Mayor |

### Individuals who acquired Swiss citizenship after the award

Nobel laureates who acquired Swiss citizenship after the award :
| Year | Image | Laureate | Born | Died | Field | Rationale |
| 1945 | | Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian theoretical physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics | 25 April 1900 in Vienna, Austria naturalized Swiss in 1949 (place of origin: Zollikon) | 15 December 1958 in Zurich | Physics | "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle" |
| 1988 | | Jack Steinberger, American physicist noted for his work with neutrinos | 25 May 1921 in Bad Kissingen, Germany naturalized Swiss in 2000 (place of origin: Geneva) | 12 December 2020 in Geneva | Physics | "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino" prize shared with Leon M. Lederman and Melvin Schwartz |

### Organizations headquartered in Switzerland who received the Nobel Peace Prize

Organizations headquartered in Switzerland who received the Nobel Peace Prize :
| Year | Logo | Organization | Founded | Headquarters | Rationale |
| 1910 | | Permanent International Peace Bureau | 1891, Bern | Bern (1891–1924) Geneva (1924–2017) Berlin, Germany (2017–present) | "for acting as a link between the peace societies of the various countries, and helping them to organize the world rallies of the international peace movement" |
| 1917 | | International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) | 1863, Geneva | Geneva | "for the efforts to take care of wounded soldiers and prisoners of war and their families" |
| 1938 | — | Nansen International Office for Refugees | 1921, Geneva | Geneva | "for having carried on the work of Fridtjof Nansen to the benefit of refugees across Europe" |
| 1944 | | International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) | 1863, Geneva | Geneva | "for the great work it has performed during the war on behalf of humanity" |
| 1954 | | Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | 1950, Geneva | Geneva | "for its efforts to heal the wounds of war by providing help and protection to refugees all over the world" |
| 1963 | | International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) | 1863, Geneva | Geneva | "for promoting the principles of the Geneva Convention and cooperation with the UN" prize shared with the League of Red Cross Societies |
| 1963 | | League of Red Cross Societies | 1919, Paris, France | Geneva | "for promoting the principles of the Geneva Convention and cooperation with the UN" prize shared with the International Committee of the Red Cross |
| 1969 | | International Labour Organization (ILO) | 1919, Geneva | Geneva | "for creating international legislation insuring certain norms for working conditions in every country" |
| 1981 | | Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | 1950, Geneva | Geneva | "for promoting the fundamental rights of refugees" |
| 1999 | | Doctors Without Borders | 1971, Paris, France | Geneva | "in recognition of the organisation's pioneering humanitarian work on several continents" |
| 2007 | | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) | 1988, New York City, USA | Geneva | "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" prize shared with Al Gore |
| 2017 | | International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) | 2007, Australia | Geneva | "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons" |