Immigrants Are Driving up Nobel Prize Counts in the U.S.

Immigrants to the U.S. have been responsible for 42 percent of all Nobel Prizes won in physics for the United States since 2000, and the counts for other Nobel Prize categories in the sciences look similar. According to a paper published by the National Foundation for American Policy, more than a third of the winners of Nobel Prizes for chemistry and medicine have also come to the U.S. from abroad. For the prize in economic sciences, about a quarter of laureates affiliated with U.S. institutions was born abroad, including Abhijit Banerjee (who was born in India) and Esther Duflo (who was born in France) who received the prize today and are affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

While some Nobel laureates emigrated to the U.S. as children, many more followed calls from U.S. top institutions and universities that have long been a draw for scientists from all over the world. Since the year 2000, 60 Nobel Prizes have gone to Harvard University – the most out of all institutions – followed by MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. The only non-U.S. institution in the top 10 is Cambridge University in the UK, which received 29 Nobel Prizes in 19 years.