Immigrants' Big Share of Nobel Prizes in the Sciences

Yesterday’s awarding of the Nobel Prize in chemistry to two female scientists was outstanding because it was the first time two women are sharing the prize. It was quite a regular affair in another regard: One of the two laureates, Emmanuelle Charpentier, is working as an French expat at the German Max Planck Institute in Berlin. Expats and immigrants winning Nobel Prizes in the sciences for institutions in their host countries is a common scenario, as our graphic shows.

Since 1969 (the year the economics prize was added), a majority share of Nobel Prizes in the science categories have gone to U.S. institutions. But the scientists carrying out the cutting-edge research there have for a long time come from all over the world. Out of the 281 laureates that were exclusively affiliated with U.S. institutions, 87 had been born abroad, according to the Nobel Prize Foundation website.

The trend is the same for other countries. Top UK institutions host just as many immigrants and foreign scientists, with 15 out of 45 laureates since 1969 having been born abroad. The biggest share of foreign laureates can be found in Switzerland (Eight foreign-born laureates opposite seven Swiss-born laureates). Here, top scientific research institutions like the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich attracted many foreign researchers.

Countries whose institutions made the top 10 without the help of any immigrant scientists are Japan, with 15 homegrown laureates, as well as Sweden (8 laureates).