List of Jewish Nobel laureates

List of Jewish Nobel laureates
Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 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 100 times their proportion of the world's population.
Jews have been awarded all six of the Nobel Foundation's awards:
Chemistry: 36 (19% of total)
Economics: 38 (41% of total)
Literature: 16 (13% of total)
Peace: 9 (8% of total)
Physics: 56 (25% of total)
Physiology or Medicine: 59 (26% of total)
Adolf von Baeyer, recipient of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was Jewish on his mother's side and is considered the first Jewish awardee.
Jewish laureates Elie Wiesel and Imre Kertész survived the extermination camps during the Holocaust. François Englert survived by being hidden in orphanages and children's homes. Others, such as Hans Bethe, Walter Kohn, Otto Stern, Albert Einstein, Hans Krebs and Martin Karplus fled Nazi Germany to avoid persecution. Still others, including Rita Levi-Montalcini, Herbert Hauptman, Robert Furchgott, Arthur Kornberg, and Jerome Karle, experienced significant antisemitism in their careers.
Arthur Ashkin, a 96-year-old American Jew, was, at the time of his award, the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize.
Chemistry
Physiology or Medicine
Physics
Literature
Economics
Peace
Forced to decline prize
Boris Pasternak, a Russian Jew, who was awarded the 1958 prize for literature, initially accepted the award, but—after intense pressure from Soviet authorities—subsequently declined it.
Nobel Laureates Boulevard
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.
See also
List of Nobel laureates
List of Muslim Nobel laureates
List of Christian Nobel laureates
List of black Nobel laureates
List of Israeli Nobel laureates
References
Further reading
Charpa, Ulrich; Deichmann, Ute. (eds.) (2007). Jews and Sciences in German Contexts: Case Studies From the 19th and 20th Centuries, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 23–25.
Feldman, Burton (2001). The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige, Arcade Publishing, pp. 407–10.
Julius, Anthony (1995). T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form, Cambridge University Press, p. 266.
Lazarus, William P.; Sullivan, Mark. (2008). Comparative Religion For Dummies, Wiley Publishing, p. 45.
Levitan, Tina (1960). The Laureates: Jewish Winners of the Nobel prize, Twayne Publishers (New York), 236 pages.
Patai, Raphael (1996). The Jewish Mind, Wayne State University Press, pp. 339–42.
Rubinstein, W. D. (1982). The Left, the Right and the Jews, Croom Helm, p. 63.
Scharfstein, Sol (1999). Understanding Jewish Holidays and Customs: Historical and Contemporary, KTAV Publishing House, p. 168.
Weiss, Mosheh (2004). A Brief History of the Jewish People, Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 216–17.
Zuckerman, Harriet (1996). Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, Transaction Publishers, originally publishing in 1977, pp. 71–78.
External links
Nobel Luminaries Project – The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot
Video by the National Museum of American Jewish History with some Jewish Nobel laureates listed
JINFO – Jewish Nobel Prize Winners
Nobel laureates
Judaism
Jewish