Where were a thousand Nobel laureates born? The US leads by a wide margin
Following the announcement of the 2026 awards, the number of laureates in the Nobel Prize open database has reached one thousand. When distributed by place of birth, the United States took first place with 300 laureates. The United Kingdom and Germany occupied the subsequent positions.
Where were a thousand Nobel laureates born? The US leads by a wide margin
The calculation is based on the current borders of countries, while the laureates' citizenship or the state in which they worked was not taken into account.
The countries with the highest number of born laureates are as follows:
USA — 300;
United Kingdom — 111;
Germany — 86;
France — 65;
Japan — 31;
Sweden — 30;
Russia — 29;
Poland — 28;
Canada — 23;
Netherlands and Italy — 20 each.
Because the results of two countries tied for the last spot, a total of 11 states were included in the list.
As of October 17, the open database contained information on 1,000 individuals and 28 organizations. Only individuals were included in the ranking, and each laureate was counted once. For instance, the fact that Marie Curie, John Bardeen, or Frederick Sanger received the award twice was not grounds for counting them as two people on the list.
The approach based on birthplace differs from rankings compiled by citizenship or universities. For example, Francis Halzen, who won the award in physics in 2026, works in the US, but because he was born in Belgium, he was credited to that country's account.
Laureates born in the territories of former empires and the USSR were also distributed according to which state their birthplace currently belongs to. Entries indicated in the database as United Kingdom, Scotland, or Northern Ireland were merged into the United Kingdom's total.
Three of the ten new laureates in 2026 — Karl Deisseroth, Robert Hall, and Michael Woodford — were born in the US. Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were born in Germany, while one new laureate each was added to the totals of Belgium, France, Japan, Canada, and South Africa.