DATA STORY: US produced the most Nobel prize winners so far

Nobel Prize

The United States of America has produced the largest number of Nobel Laureates by a wide margin since the first time the prize was distributed in 1901.

Not considering the nationalities of this year’s recipients, the US has 260 Nobel Prize winners under its belt. This is followed by the United Kingdom with 84 recipients, which is almost 3 times fewer than their American counterparts.

Looking at the laureates for the individual prize categories, the gap is equally wider where the US trumps the rest of the world in all categories, barring literature.

With the Nobel Prize for Literature, the US comes second, with 12 writers winning the prize. The French have the highest number of writers with 15 recipients for the Literature prize.

Taking all the prize categories into consideration, Harvard University has the largest number (133) of Nobel winners followed by Columbia University with 99 prize winners. This includes Prize winners who have studied or taught at the university as professors.

These are also universities which receive billions of dollars in endowments, which play a vital role in furthering research. Harvard, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Oxford University and Princeton University received more than USD 5 billion in endowment funds in 2016.

Finally, there is yawning gender gap in the numbers of women who hvae received the Nobel prize. Out of the 900 recipients of the prize so far, only 48 women have won the prize. For every woman who received the prize, 19 men have bagged it in the Nobel's century-long history.