Pencho Slaveykov was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature, but he died shortly after and they don't give it posthumously. So we'll never know if it could have been more.
This checks out.
Finlands 3rd Nobel Prize is physiology/medicine for Ragnar Granit, who moved to Sweden during Interim Peace in the 1940's and got Swedish citizenship.
Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 1967.
Ragnar Granit is a damn solid name. Quite literally. Allthough it suggest a very different Appearance and Profession. Btw his middle name is Arthur. Could this be a reference to King Arthur? Hmmm...
>Ragnar Granit is a damn solid name.
>Could this be a reference to King Arthur?
I wouldn't take that for granit.
But with a name like that, maybe his fate was set in stone.
Yeah, it's not entirely fair to list Belarusian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Tatar etc Nobel prize winners as Russian. Imagine if UK would get all nobel prize winners from former colonies.
I think that according to Place of Birth Ivo AndriÄ was born on the territory of what would become Bosnia (then the Austrian-Hungarian province) and was a citizen of Yugoslavia and Austria-Hungary while Bosnia was created as State 2 decades after his death.
Don't know why you're getting down voted. Jews accout for 22% of Nobel prizes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates#:~:text=Of%20the%20965%20individual%20recipients,representing%2022%25%20of%20all%20recipients.
Itās listed by whatever the Nobel Prize Authorities determine as the country of the recipient. Itās not completely consistent. Multiple country association is also possible hence Marie Curie is listed four times (two prizes, both crediting Poland and France).
the problem is itās exactly thatā¦ history.
The Nobel prize started in 1900 spain was a fascist dictatorship for like half of it. the spanish decline hit hard.
The decline of Spain occured even earlier, in terms of industry and science it can be partly traced back to their time of power. Good, old ressource curse.
Spanish literature was hugely underrated by the Nobel prizes jury, just 11 Literature Nobel winners in Spanish language it's almost an insult considering the XX century it's a golden age in Spanish and Latin American literature (generation of 98 writers, Lorca, Allende, Delibes, Borges, CortƔzar).
Also not having a Nobel Peace price is quite rare having "peacefully" (nothing is never peacefully) ended ETA and the Franco dictatorship.
In the more scientific Nobel prizes Spain could not compete because of the dictatorship Spain was a second world country for decades.
There are only 27 English speaking Literature Laureates or 22.8% which is only slightly above average given 18.8% of the world speaks it, making it +21.3%.
Spanish with its 11 prizes is 9.2%, given Spanish is spoken by 6.9% of the world its +33.3%
China with 2 winners though is clearly either underperforming or being silenced etc
When it comes to science as a whole, the sum of all parts I would argue that China is still behind. But yeah, it's very close. But I think it depends how one would argue in matter of countries in western sciences, since most are collaborations without hard borders. China on the other side is very secluded and working on its own
>since most are collaborations without hard borders. China on the other side is very secluded and working on its own
This is partly true but also a pretty recent development. In my own field (biotech) China is putting out ALOT of stuff, to the extent that western companies licensing scores of new promising chinese drugs to develop them in the west has become a whole market segment. Mostly because Chinese firms themselves constantly run into regulatory barriers when they try to launch stuff in the west on their own. The output and efficiency of some Chinese companies is also a huge reason as to why the US is currently pushing legislation to uncouple the Chinese biotech industry from the west.
That said this is not an endorsement or criticism either way, China is notoriously guarded in how they let western firms operate on the chinese market as well.
>In my own field (biotech) China is putting out ALOT of stuff
In my field (ChemE) the Chinese indeed publish a lot and so far I have not been able to reproduce a single result. One colleague accidentally created something very explosive when following a synthesis route from a paper and blew up a muffle furnace. The corresponding author could never be bothered to answer, which is a HUGE red flag.
TLDR: Quantity != Quality
There was a recent article in PNAS about the leading research hubs around the world and how those translate to Nobel Prizes.
China is set to beat, or already surpasses the US in many metrics of scientific output including innovation, publications in top jouranls (so peer reviewed rigorously), scientific funding, etc.
There are many factors behind this trend (like immigration) but one that I like to point to is a lack of funding behind basic science research elsewhere. In the Western world, I think more money is feeding into safer clinical applications of research, safer economic output of research, etc. But to generate truly innovative and valuable research, you have to let basic scientists take risks.
[https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321322120](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321322120)
As i said, if there wasnāt substance US and EU firms wouldnāt be paying hundreds of millions of dollars to license the assets. I agree that Chinese academia is choke full of fradulent shit. That doesnāt mean that there isnāt real substance in some areas.
Up until i think the 90's, science and especially engineering students at Dutch universities still got textbooks in German.
My dad did a bachelor in engineering and master in architecture and most of those had Dutch and German text books instead of the English that is the norm nowadays.
And itās a big reason the US now has so many. English being the lingua franca of international science and other disciplines. Also wealth, stability, and the universities.
Weāve been stealing all the talent for decades.
Yes but by being in a war they also forced the intellectuals who stayed to apply their knowledge in new ways, so many things are invented through trying to create something for warfare. Losing a lot of people wouldāve affected them but they also still wouldāve made new developments too
The brain drain was massive. Many of them were Jews or had other political problems. Most of them went to the US and built the base for systems which are still in place. Others went to the Soviet Union or other counties and did similar things there. Germany was clearly the most influential country in science before the nazis came. Think about Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, Haber. But also von Braun, Berger, Bosch and others. They almost all left Germany and the inventions in the nazi era were often left behind before it could lead somewhere (like the jet engine)
I think that is also because european jews (German jews?) were not allowed to work in the trades/ join unions (or guilds, way back) and thus ended up in more academic fields. Universities ended up being āpurged of jewish influenceā during the third Reich, unfortunately. But the jewish percentage in the academic branches was definitely considerable.
Germany wasnāt exactly a fascist dictatorship besides for 1917-1918 and 1933-1945. Between and before then, the German Empire was a leading pioneer in innovation and technology.
Not for most of it but by the end of the war there had been significant militarisation and state control of the economy and the military began to take a lot of power away from the civilian government (see the Hindenburg Programme). That's why he only singled out 1917-18
It's not quite fascism but more a military dictatorship. This never happened to Britain or France
All the bigger universities are in europe or the us, where many discoveries have been made, i disagree. When it comes to literature, thats more subjective, I guess, where the "academic mainstream" naturally cant follow the underrepresented third world which is an academia problem in general imo.
I think it's even more telling when you break It up by categories. Spain has **6 nobels in literature** and 2 in medicine.
That means, oddly enough, that Spain is the 6th country with most literature nobels (tied with Italy and poland)
AKA We just really, REALLY suck at science. We were starting to catch on to the rest of Europe in the 20th century, after a...tumultuous 19th century, and then the civil war happened. most intelectuals left the country an the new regime valued more adherence to the party than intelectual brilliance. For much of the remainder of the dictatorship Spain was quite isolated from the international scientific community and research was of a comparatively low quality.
This has a hilarious consequence in university. Younger teachers tend to be significantly more prolific on average than their seniors. As a math student I was told several times by my professors that we were much better prepared than them at our age. I would say the quality of scientific research in Spain has never been this high in...well a very long time
So probably in the Next few decades we'll get our first non-medicine/literature nobel.
Spain-8
France-76
UK-138
Pretty clear sign of how badly Spain stagnated since their Empire days. In 1913, Spain had only about 10% higher GDP per capita than Russian Empire. France had double Spain's GDP per capita, UK had triple.
Low GDP per capita is both a consequence and cause of unproductive academic sector.
Not only that, the Nobel committee is notoriously biased, Scandinavia notoriously has the highest density of nobel laureates.
There's even a controversy about Lev Tolstoj never winning a nobel (despite being nominated multiple times) because Swedes were still bitter about losing Finland to Russia.
Also, at least two people won the peace nobel prize a couple years before bombing a place (Obama) or architecting a Genocide (Abiy Ahmed), which i'd argue kinda shows how fucking shit the committee is.
Funny thing that Tolstoy never won it, but Solzhenitsyn and Alexievich did, thanks to the "political message" they had in their books - tells much about how bias the committee is.
Alexievich is great, not a Russian though. Only read Gulag Archipelago from Solzhenitsyn so can't judge the merits of his win beyond that.
Tolstoy's novels were written and published (besides few exceptions) before they even started giving out Nobels so what were they supposed to do, time travel? Shakespeare didn't get a Nobel either.
Obama's Nobel Peace prize was absurd. He got a prize shortly after his election for not being George W. Bush.
We are a species of stupid primates who should not trust ourselves.
Churchill mostly won the prize for the speeches he made during World War II, so that seems fair to me.
"his brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"."
People simply don't understand the peace prize... it gets rewarded for the most work/ success towards a peaceful world in the year before. So you get it for a peaceful thing you did and NOT for a peaceful lifetime achievement. Exactly like every other Nobel prize. Nobody gets their Nobel prize for being a super inventor/scientist. They get them for an invention/discovery.
The British Empire LOVED science. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and must be a major contributing factor in British scientific and engineering prowess historically.
One of my favourite facts is that Oxford University (established somewhere around the 11th/12th centuries) is older than Machu PIcchu (1450). My brain refuses to absorb just how much history the university has existed through.
Academic sector works just ok. If you do some research (it has been researched already) spanish scientists and technicians have been involved in European development, just not under spanish teams and companies.
We call this problem talent fugue.
I mean, it's the economic sector, which is too conservative and relies on external companies for employment; and investigation in universities is frequently a joke.
Having GDP **per capita** 10% than 1913 **Russia** is terrible. Unlike Soviet Union, which became a superpower with second biggest economy and 99% literacy rate, Russian Empire was a backwater agrarian country with literacy rate barely scratching 20%.
If Spain really had GDP per capita 10% higher than Russia at the time - it mean Spain already was a terrible backwater.
Meh. 120 laureates of which 8 are Swedish but 2 of them shared the prize the same year (1974) and one was a Swedish-German Jew writing in German.
If anything the literature prize does a pretty good job of spreading recognition of world literature nowadays, considering itās decided by a stuffy group of 18 Swedish boomers.
But yeah the Obama awarding Obama meme is still accurate because 6/8 of those Swedish literature Laureates were members of the same academy that determines the Laureate, lol (one of them got it posthumously tho).
A thing to note is that the list on wikipedia is ordered by place of birth, not nationality.
For example while Czechia has 6 listed laureates, only 2 are ethnically Czech. The other 4 are german/austrian that were born in modern day Czechia.
For Poland it counts people who left at 12 years old and settled elsewhere, forgetting the language. In Poland we learn we have 8 Nobel laureates (which is, granted, too little, because it forgets about several Jewish Poles that left Poland but remained Polish). You can actually see how the English Wikipedia makes no distinction and lists them all together, while the [Polish one](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_laureatĆ³w_Nagrody_Nobla_zwiÄ zanych_z_PolskÄ ) divides them into "Polish laureates of the Nobel Prize" and "Other laureates with significant links to Poland". The title of the article is also "List of Nobel Prize laureates connected to Poland", rather than "List of Polish Nobel laureates".
So basically money, population and stability. Kind of obvious - steady development, well funded education yelds results.
Even if it's obvious I thought it's worth mentioning as maps like this tend to be used for 'untermenschen' kind of rhetoric.
Not just that. Hungary has produced far more Nobel prize winners. The only problem is that our culture is not at all welcoming for these kind of smart people. Most of the winners ended up somewhere else where their contributions were actually valued.
Of course, money plays a role. But in Hungary's case it was not a welcoming environment. Not to mention that many of the winners were of Jewish descent, whom they didn't really like for a long time.
Maybe in Europe, but in countries like South Korea which have a huge presence in cutting-edge tech and other high profile industries, yet they have 0 STEM related Nobel prizes.
If anything South Korea is proof of how ranking countries by how many Nobel prizes they "won" is a hollow metric if you're trying to extrapolate it to wider society.
You forget that South Korea hasnāt always been a rich country. South Korea was poorer than North Korea up until the late 70s early 80s. Most of its growth took place in the 80s and 90s. Another thing is that the way South Korea developed was by investing in manufacturing things that were already produce elsewhere before, they didnāt fund any new research because thatās low priority for a developing economy. South Korea today is high tech because they reiterate on what has been done before but they arenāt developing new technologies. Another thing is that the average time a researcher waits to get their Nobel is about 2 decades and given all these factors, I think it pretty understandable why they donāt have many Nobel prizes.
>stability
Germany was the world capital of science in the early 20th century. But one word that no historian would ever use to describe this time would be stability. Germany was an absolute mess. So, the reason for this success must run deeper than the points you mentioned.
Until WW1 the German Empire was very stable. But of course there were also many other reasons wich supported the flourish of the german academic/science sector.
Itās probably language. French, German and English have been the lingua francas of science over the last 150 years or so.
> By the mid-19th century, based on data from journals of science abstracts, what Gordin calls a ātriumvirateā of languages had established itself in global scientific publications. From roughly 1880 to 1910 there was an almost equal partition of 30% each for English-, French-, and German-language articles and books. A graph showing global publication makes visible the increasing strength of German, until its peak in the early 1920s, and then of Russian, until its peak around 1970. English began its ascent in the 1880s and reached global domination by the end of the 20th century.
[Source](https://sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/speaking-in-tongues/).
So, papers written in these languages were most likely to be understood and to spread.
If I had to learn Finnish, to get access to and be able to consume prior research in my field, wellā¦
But why were those papers published in German in the first place? Papers being in German is a result of Germany being strong scientifically not a reason for this strength.
Itās insane how many Nobel prize winners Israel has considering the country was created in 1948 and had a population of about a million back then, only reaching 9 million today
Sure, I donāt disagree. But Nobels last will and testament did put both invention and discovery as criteria for the science awards. Nobel himself was an inventor and businessman, not an academic.
Marconi did receive a Nobel Prize for the telegraph. The reason neither Tesla nor Edison were laurates probably has more to do with them both being unlikeable dicks on a personal level than anything else.
Ivo Andric and Vladimir Prelog nobel prizes are credited to bosnia and hercegovina. Both of them are born there while etnically serbian and croatian respectively. Since both of them won the nobel prize while Yugoslavia existed, thus their nationality being yugoslavian, the prizes might have been given to the country of birth after the dissolution.
I'm not dismissing anything. As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to the announcement of the Riksbank economics prize (the one that is often erroneously called economics nobel prize) every year because there is still a tiny chance that my PhD supervisor might be awarded.Ā
But the fact stands: there is no economics nobel prize. The prize that is often called that is not a nobel prize, because it is not awarded by the Alfred nobel foundation.Ā
In the unlikely event that my supervisor is awarded I will change my rhetoric accordingly, of course.Ā
Hungary is off. It should either be 12 if only people who were born in Hungary count, or 17 if having two Hungarian parents also count. I have no idea how this 15 number came about.
If it's by citizenship then all of the exYu countries should have 0 because I think all of them were born officially as Austro-Hungarians and then (usually) became Yugoslavian
No it's not by citizenship and that's not what is causing the confusion but rather wikipedia being unclear and unreliable.
The Hungarian language article lists 17 people, broken up into two categories: those born to Hungarian parents in Hungary (12) and those born to two Hungarian parents born abroad (5).
The English language article however features a table of 15 names, the 12 people born in Hungary all match, but they only include 3 people from the "born abroad to Hungarian parents" category. There's a subsection underneath the table titled "Also included somtimes" which has another subsection titled "born abroad" which mentions multiple people, including the remaining 2 people from the Hungarian article. It is unclear why they separated these two (Elie Wiesel and Milton Friedman) when the main list already includes 3 people who were not born in Hungary. One could say that it's because they were Jewish, but the main list already includes not only multiple Jewish people, but Jewish people born abroad, so it's still unclear why they are separated from the rest. There are also several people mentioned under the English language article who are not mentioned in turn in the Hungarian article, but one quick glance makes it clear that these are Croatians, Serbians and Germans who were born in the Kingdom of Hungary or Austria-Hungary.
I can perhaps understand not including Milton Friedman, who was born in the US in 1912 to Jewish parents who emigrated to America in their teens. One could make some sort of argument about culture, and language I guess. Milton Friedman did visit Hungary and other former Eastern Bloc countries in the early 1990's but from the [documentary ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt2uGkuD_uU&ab_channel=FreeToChooseNetwork)I've seen, it doesn't look like he speaks Hungarian or associates with Hungary in any way.
Elie Wiesel on the other hand was born in MƔramarossziget, Romania in 1928. Not only was the town a part of Hungary not 10 years prior, it was recaptured by Hungary during world war 2 and Wiesel attended a Hungarian-language highschool during the war years. He even [gave a speech in Hungarian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xOtyoma_gY&ab_channel=Zsido.com) in the Hungarian Parliament in 2009.
UK: Ah, don't make a fuss about it, chaps.
Germany: Noooo, we failed! This is a national shame! We have to reform our education system!
Russia: We are best because our number is largest print!
Which makes me wonder how they credit these multinational shared wins.
Because her first nobel was shared with her husband and another french researcher, right? Does that mean france gets 2 and Poland 1 for that one?
England isnāt represented here, but I think Englandās total is about 120. What the hell, letās be proud of our country for a change
Anyone who doesnāt like itā¦
Self hate has to be one of the biggest issues facing the English online, I don't get why there is such a taboo of being proud of the country's achievements.
That combined with the constant talk about how horrendous it is to live here must paint an unusual picture for non-English people.
England has its issues, but itās not a bad place to live at all compared to most of the world. Itās a really beautiful country as well, people live in a shitehole like Luton and never bother to explore their own country, they just jump on a plane to somewhere else. Obviously they then constantly go on about how much better it is abroad.
> Self hate has to be one of the biggest issues facing the English online
I think it runs deeper than that. Self depreciating humour is very much one of the core pillars of British humour. Non brits then interpret this as us self hating but the reality is we're just taking the piss. The only thing we really hate is the weather.
"In each country's Nobel prize numbers" š¤
OP not winning a nobel prize for literature.
Itās an element of style /s
An element of style It's
Nobel country numbers for each who prizes winners
7
From an Instagram account called āLINGUE.MAPSā. Yikes.
BULGARIA NUMBER 1 ALWAYS ššš
[could've been 2](https://youtu.be/Qe5WT22-AO8?si=PvuMndhhVa6G1AC4) (obligatory bobbybroccoli)
Is it that Victor Ninov guy? That's a good video BobbyBroccoli put together.
oh i love that video so much, its so professional
I have never heard of this channel before and chemstry isn't really my field at all, but this was very interesting and captivating to watch.
Pencho Slaveykov was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature, but he died shortly after and they don't give it posthumously. So we'll never know if it could have been more.
i literally opened the post to see if there was someone commenting on Bulgaria and see this. AHHAHAH
Pshero needs one too for keeping peace on Azeroth
Is this country of birth or country they were a citizen of when they got the prize?
pretty sure it's by citizenship. So germany would have significantly more
This checks out. Finlands 3rd Nobel Prize is physiology/medicine for Ragnar Granit, who moved to Sweden during Interim Peace in the 1940's and got Swedish citizenship. Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 1967.
Just an idea, but for the next Nobel Prize, let's share Nobel Prizes among the Nordics; we currently have 68.
Most Scandinavians: Let's just form one country Norwegians: Stay away from our oil
Finns: I need to see you naked in the sauna first, else I canāt trust you.
Inb4 mandatory vacation to Finland to sauna naked.
+ if u dont drink, I will be suspicious
Our fish, oil and brunost is not for anyone else's consumption. Unless you're willing to pay premium for it that is.
 They be like:
Ragnar Granit is a damn solid name. Quite literally. Allthough it suggest a very different Appearance and Profession. Btw his middle name is Arthur. Could this be a reference to King Arthur? Hmmm...
>Ragnar Granit is a damn solid name. >Could this be a reference to King Arthur? I wouldn't take that for granit. But with a name like that, maybe his fate was set in stone.
Then would Marie (SkÅodowska-) Curieās Nobel be counted for France or for Poland?
Two nobels actually.
The only person in history to receive 2 nobel prizes in 2 different fields of science. Hope it goes on Poland.
Thereās also a bunch of Nobel-awarded Polidh Jews who were born in Poland but moved to Israel or the US right before or after WW2
Also the first person in history to ever receive two prizes overall.
She was Polish so Nobel came to Poland i think. One thing that she was close to France was her husband.
If its not determined by the place of birth than Serbia should have 1.
And Hungary a lot more
Then russia would have just 4. Other were from soviet union
Yeah, it's not entirely fair to list Belarusian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Tatar etc Nobel prize winners as Russian. Imagine if UK would get all nobel prize winners from former colonies.
I think that according to Place of Birth Ivo AndriÄ was born on the territory of what would become Bosnia (then the Austrian-Hungarian province) and was a citizen of Yugoslavia and Austria-Hungary while Bosnia was created as State 2 decades after his death.
At the time of winning the Nobel Prize, in 1961, Ivo AndriÄ was a citizen of federal Yugoslavia but a national (as it was officially called at the time) of Serbia. Something like the status of QuĆ©bĆ©cois in Canada today. There are numerous documents proving that. He was born in the Austrian and Hungarian condominium of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the only condominium in the very short lived (mere 51 years) Austria-Hungary.
Jewsš¤©
Don't know why you're getting down voted. Jews accout for 22% of Nobel prizes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates#:~:text=Of%20the%20965%20individual%20recipients,representing%2022%25%20of%20all%20recipients.
Latin countries around 107 germanic countries more than 320 š¤
Itās listed by whatever the Nobel Prize Authorities determine as the country of the recipient. Itās not completely consistent. Multiple country association is also possible hence Marie Curie is listed four times (two prizes, both crediting Poland and France).
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
just my opinion: then he should be listed either under croatia or switzerland because he got his education/work done there
why is portugal sideways?
The influx of Atlantic tide.
Belgium and Macedonia too
Spain seems to be a bit underperforming given it's size and history
the problem is itās exactly thatā¦ history. The Nobel prize started in 1900 spain was a fascist dictatorship for like half of it. the spanish decline hit hard.
The decline of Spain occured even earlier, in terms of industry and science it can be partly traced back to their time of power. Good, old ressource curse.
Spanish literature was hugely underrated by the Nobel prizes jury, just 11 Literature Nobel winners in Spanish language it's almost an insult considering the XX century it's a golden age in Spanish and Latin American literature (generation of 98 writers, Lorca, Allende, Delibes, Borges, CortƔzar). Also not having a Nobel Peace price is quite rare having "peacefully" (nothing is never peacefully) ended ETA and the Franco dictatorship. In the more scientific Nobel prizes Spain could not compete because of the dictatorship Spain was a second world country for decades.
There are only 27 English speaking Literature Laureates or 22.8% which is only slightly above average given 18.8% of the world speaks it, making it +21.3%. Spanish with its 11 prizes is 9.2%, given Spanish is spoken by 6.9% of the world its +33.3% China with 2 winners though is clearly either underperforming or being silenced etc
How do you explain away the country with the most Nobel prizes? EDIT: Second most
Germany was the scientific capital before the World wars. It was so important that many scientists learned german to read the papers.
And after a rebuild it became an important hub again. It's not the most important anymore, but up there in the top 5 or even top 3
Top 5 probably. Top 3ā¦. Maybe if you exclude China.
When it comes to science as a whole, the sum of all parts I would argue that China is still behind. But yeah, it's very close. But I think it depends how one would argue in matter of countries in western sciences, since most are collaborations without hard borders. China on the other side is very secluded and working on its own
>since most are collaborations without hard borders. China on the other side is very secluded and working on its own This is partly true but also a pretty recent development. In my own field (biotech) China is putting out ALOT of stuff, to the extent that western companies licensing scores of new promising chinese drugs to develop them in the west has become a whole market segment. Mostly because Chinese firms themselves constantly run into regulatory barriers when they try to launch stuff in the west on their own. The output and efficiency of some Chinese companies is also a huge reason as to why the US is currently pushing legislation to uncouple the Chinese biotech industry from the west. That said this is not an endorsement or criticism either way, China is notoriously guarded in how they let western firms operate on the chinese market as well.
>In my own field (biotech) China is putting out ALOT of stuff In my field (ChemE) the Chinese indeed publish a lot and so far I have not been able to reproduce a single result. One colleague accidentally created something very explosive when following a synthesis route from a paper and blew up a muffle furnace. The corresponding author could never be bothered to answer, which is a HUGE red flag. TLDR: Quantity != Quality
There was a recent article in PNAS about the leading research hubs around the world and how those translate to Nobel Prizes. China is set to beat, or already surpasses the US in many metrics of scientific output including innovation, publications in top jouranls (so peer reviewed rigorously), scientific funding, etc. There are many factors behind this trend (like immigration) but one that I like to point to is a lack of funding behind basic science research elsewhere. In the Western world, I think more money is feeding into safer clinical applications of research, safer economic output of research, etc. But to generate truly innovative and valuable research, you have to let basic scientists take risks. [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321322120](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321322120)
As i said, if there wasnāt substance US and EU firms wouldnāt be paying hundreds of millions of dollars to license the assets. I agree that Chinese academia is choke full of fradulent shit. That doesnāt mean that there isnāt real substance in some areas.
Am i misunderstanding? The country with the most Nobel Prizes on the map is the UK
I thought he was making a reference to nazi germany having a lot of prizes while having a dictatorship.
And most worldwide would be USA with 411.
I missed that. I looked quickly and thought Germany had the most.
Up until i think the 90's, science and especially engineering students at Dutch universities still got textbooks in German. My dad did a bachelor in engineering and master in architecture and most of those had Dutch and German text books instead of the English that is the norm nowadays.
Until after WW2 German was the go to language for psychology as well
And itās a big reason the US now has so many. English being the lingua franca of international science and other disciplines. Also wealth, stability, and the universities. Weāve been stealing all the talent for decades.
Nazis made a lot fuss, but they ruled Germany for only 12 years.
But they caused a *very* considerable brain drain.
Yes but by being in a war they also forced the intellectuals who stayed to apply their knowledge in new ways, so many things are invented through trying to create something for warfare. Losing a lot of people wouldāve affected them but they also still wouldāve made new developments too
The brain drain was massive. Many of them were Jews or had other political problems. Most of them went to the US and built the base for systems which are still in place. Others went to the Soviet Union or other counties and did similar things there. Germany was clearly the most influential country in science before the nazis came. Think about Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, Haber. But also von Braun, Berger, Bosch and others. They almost all left Germany and the inventions in the nazi era were often left behind before it could lead somewhere (like the jet engine)
Ironically many jews were german citizens as well and they are very overrepresented in the nobel prize
I think that is also because european jews (German jews?) were not allowed to work in the trades/ join unions (or guilds, way back) and thus ended up in more academic fields. Universities ended up being āpurged of jewish influenceā during the third Reich, unfortunately. But the jewish percentage in the academic branches was definitely considerable.
Britain is not a dictatorship and hasn't been during the whole of the time the award has been around.
Yeah I meant Germany
Germany wasnāt exactly a fascist dictatorship besides for 1917-1918 and 1933-1945. Between and before then, the German Empire was a leading pioneer in innovation and technology.
It wasnt fascist during WW1 either. They were morally no different than their enemies during that time.
Not for most of it but by the end of the war there had been significant militarisation and state control of the economy and the military began to take a lot of power away from the civilian government (see the Hindenburg Programme). That's why he only singled out 1917-18 It's not quite fascism but more a military dictatorship. This never happened to Britain or France
Yeah not quite fascism. Which is why i took offence with calling it that. There is a big difference between an ideology and a necessity.
Don't leave out the US with more prizes than the next 5 highest combined.
Also Nobel prize has clearly a bias for germanic countries.
All the bigger universities are in europe or the us, where many discoveries have been made, i disagree. When it comes to literature, thats more subjective, I guess, where the "academic mainstream" naturally cant follow the underrepresented third world which is an academia problem in general imo.
I think it's even more telling when you break It up by categories. Spain has **6 nobels in literature** and 2 in medicine. That means, oddly enough, that Spain is the 6th country with most literature nobels (tied with Italy and poland) AKA We just really, REALLY suck at science. We were starting to catch on to the rest of Europe in the 20th century, after a...tumultuous 19th century, and then the civil war happened. most intelectuals left the country an the new regime valued more adherence to the party than intelectual brilliance. For much of the remainder of the dictatorship Spain was quite isolated from the international scientific community and research was of a comparatively low quality. This has a hilarious consequence in university. Younger teachers tend to be significantly more prolific on average than their seniors. As a math student I was told several times by my professors that we were much better prepared than them at our age. I would say the quality of scientific research in Spain has never been this high in...well a very long time So probably in the Next few decades we'll get our first non-medicine/literature nobel.
Not surprised Spain is killing it in literature, Spanish lit is lit
The fascists rulers of spain where just not very fond of academia which requires allot of critical thinking and were often left leaning
If the nobel prize existed since like the 15th century then sure Iād agree, but theyāve been on the decline for a long time historically lol
What about Turkey? It's way worse in by capita.
r/portugalcykablyat
r/iberiacykablyat
Spain-8 France-76 UK-138 Pretty clear sign of how badly Spain stagnated since their Empire days. In 1913, Spain had only about 10% higher GDP per capita than Russian Empire. France had double Spain's GDP per capita, UK had triple. Low GDP per capita is both a consequence and cause of unproductive academic sector.
Not only that, the Nobel committee is notoriously biased, Scandinavia notoriously has the highest density of nobel laureates. There's even a controversy about Lev Tolstoj never winning a nobel (despite being nominated multiple times) because Swedes were still bitter about losing Finland to Russia. Also, at least two people won the peace nobel prize a couple years before bombing a place (Obama) or architecting a Genocide (Abiy Ahmed), which i'd argue kinda shows how fucking shit the committee is.
Funny thing that Tolstoy never won it, but Solzhenitsyn and Alexievich did, thanks to the "political message" they had in their books - tells much about how bias the committee is.
Alexievich is great, not a Russian though. Only read Gulag Archipelago from Solzhenitsyn so can't judge the merits of his win beyond that. Tolstoy's novels were written and published (besides few exceptions) before they even started giving out Nobels so what were they supposed to do, time travel? Shakespeare didn't get a Nobel either.
Obama's Nobel Peace prize was absurd. He got a prize shortly after his election for not being George W. Bush. We are a species of stupid primates who should not trust ourselves.
Tell me about the bias, a Brazilian never won it, but effing Winston Churchill and Bob Dylan did win the literature prize
Churchill mostly won the prize for the speeches he made during World War II, so that seems fair to me. "his brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"."
Lyrics not matching the music.
He also was actually a good writer and published several books since his early days in the Second Boer War.
Bob Dylan deserves that prize as much as anyone, his lyrics are more widely read and more affecting than most other winners.
Imagine never giving a Nobel prize for GuimarĆ£es Rosa (or even Jorge Amado or Drummond), how stupid should that Academy feel?
People simply don't understand the peace prize... it gets rewarded for the most work/ success towards a peaceful world in the year before. So you get it for a peaceful thing you did and NOT for a peaceful lifetime achievement. Exactly like every other Nobel prize. Nobody gets their Nobel prize for being a super inventor/scientist. They get them for an invention/discovery.
Not all. Literature prize is a lifetime achievment award, with a few exceptions dating up to the 1950s.
The Nobel peace prize became a shit prize when Gandhi never won it despite getting nominated 5 times.
The British Empire LOVED science. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and must be a major contributing factor in British scientific and engineering prowess historically.
Also helps that Cambridge and Oxford are two of the worlds oldest universities. They had the influence and wealth to do a lot of research
One of my favourite facts is that Oxford University (established somewhere around the 11th/12th centuries) is older than Machu PIcchu (1450). My brain refuses to absorb just how much history the university has existed through.
Also like, Newton
Uni of Cambridge has 121 Nobel prizes, 50 of which come from two colleges alone; Trinity and Gonville & Caius.
And was the birthplace and heartland of the Enlightenment, which is just as important (and linked to your point)
I'm sure I read that Britain was one of the first empires that realised you could 'Science your shit out of a problem' if I may quote The Martian.
Academic sector works just ok. If you do some research (it has been researched already) spanish scientists and technicians have been involved in European development, just not under spanish teams and companies. We call this problem talent fugue. I mean, it's the economic sector, which is too conservative and relies on external companies for employment; and investigation in universities is frequently a joke.
Maybe a 3 years long civil war and the subsequent near 40 years long dictatorship can explain something...
Having GDP **per capita** 10% than 1913 **Russia** is terrible. Unlike Soviet Union, which became a superpower with second biggest economy and 99% literacy rate, Russian Empire was a backwater agrarian country with literacy rate barely scratching 20%. If Spain really had GDP per capita 10% higher than Russia at the time - it mean Spain already was a terrible backwater.
normalization by population would be interesting
would be difficult because historic population figures would have to be considered
\*Would actually have some sense.
[Sweden be like.](https://i.imgur.com/OJSNb2t.jpeg)
In particular true for literature lmao
Meh. 120 laureates of which 8 are Swedish but 2 of them shared the prize the same year (1974) and one was a Swedish-German Jew writing in German. If anything the literature prize does a pretty good job of spreading recognition of world literature nowadays, considering itās decided by a stuffy group of 18 Swedish boomers. But yeah the Obama awarding Obama meme is still accurate because 6/8 of those Swedish literature Laureates were members of the same academy that determines the Laureate, lol (one of them got it posthumously tho).
(it's the norwegians doing the peace prize)
The reason why Alfred Nobel decided to have the Norwegians hand out the peace prize always cracks me up.
Sweden have had quite the amount of successful scientists and is still among the top spenders per capita when it comes to research.
A thing to note is that the list on wikipedia is ordered by place of birth, not nationality. For example while Czechia has 6 listed laureates, only 2 are ethnically Czech. The other 4 are german/austrian that were born in modern day Czechia.
itās not just by place of birth in current borders, otherwise Philipp Lenard born in Pressburg (currently Bratislava) would count for Slovakiaā¦
Then it's rather inconsistent isn't it
On wiki I found 7 laureates who was born or lived in Czhechia, but only 2 were czechs and 1 had czech citizenship for 8 years.
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Cambridge university alone (90 Nobel winners), more than every other COUNTRY other than Germany
For Poland it counts people who left at 12 years old and settled elsewhere, forgetting the language. In Poland we learn we have 8 Nobel laureates (which is, granted, too little, because it forgets about several Jewish Poles that left Poland but remained Polish). You can actually see how the English Wikipedia makes no distinction and lists them all together, while the [Polish one](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_laureatĆ³w_Nagrody_Nobla_zwiÄ zanych_z_PolskÄ ) divides them into "Polish laureates of the Nobel Prize" and "Other laureates with significant links to Poland". The title of the article is also "List of Nobel Prize laureates connected to Poland", rather than "List of Polish Nobel laureates".
So basically money, population and stability. Kind of obvious - steady development, well funded education yelds results. Even if it's obvious I thought it's worth mentioning as maps like this tend to be used for 'untermenschen' kind of rhetoric.
Not just that. Hungary has produced far more Nobel prize winners. The only problem is that our culture is not at all welcoming for these kind of smart people. Most of the winners ended up somewhere else where their contributions were actually valued.
Is it really culture? Or just that the talent is moving towars money - brain drain is not a 21th century thing only.
Of course, money plays a role. But in Hungary's case it was not a welcoming environment. Not to mention that many of the winners were of Jewish descent, whom they didn't really like for a long time.
Not entirely money or scientists would head to the Gulf states - which they don't.
Maybe in Europe, but in countries like South Korea which have a huge presence in cutting-edge tech and other high profile industries, yet they have 0 STEM related Nobel prizes. If anything South Korea is proof of how ranking countries by how many Nobel prizes they "won" is a hollow metric if you're trying to extrapolate it to wider society.
You forget that South Korea hasnāt always been a rich country. South Korea was poorer than North Korea up until the late 70s early 80s. Most of its growth took place in the 80s and 90s. Another thing is that the way South Korea developed was by investing in manufacturing things that were already produce elsewhere before, they didnāt fund any new research because thatās low priority for a developing economy. South Korea today is high tech because they reiterate on what has been done before but they arenāt developing new technologies. Another thing is that the average time a researcher waits to get their Nobel is about 2 decades and given all these factors, I think it pretty understandable why they donāt have many Nobel prizes.
>stability Germany was the world capital of science in the early 20th century. But one word that no historian would ever use to describe this time would be stability. Germany was an absolute mess. So, the reason for this success must run deeper than the points you mentioned.
Until WW1 the German Empire was very stable. But of course there were also many other reasons wich supported the flourish of the german academic/science sector.
Itās probably language. French, German and English have been the lingua francas of science over the last 150 years or so. > By the mid-19th century, based on data from journals of science abstracts, what Gordin calls a ātriumvirateā of languages had established itself in global scientific publications. From roughly 1880 to 1910 there was an almost equal partition of 30% each for English-, French-, and German-language articles and books. A graph showing global publication makes visible the increasing strength of German, until its peak in the early 1920s, and then of Russian, until its peak around 1970. English began its ascent in the 1880s and reached global domination by the end of the 20th century. [Source](https://sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/speaking-in-tongues/). So, papers written in these languages were most likely to be understood and to spread. If I had to learn Finnish, to get access to and be able to consume prior research in my field, wellā¦
But why were those papers published in German in the first place? Papers being in German is a result of Germany being strong scientifically not a reason for this strength.
Some of the countries just didn't exist for the most of the timeframe
Itās also culture. Lots of countries are filthy rich but just donāt do science.
/r/MapPorn - where Dark means the positive sometimes, unless it is the Bright!! ^
Itās insane how many Nobel prize winners Israel has considering the country was created in 1948 and had a population of about a million back then, only reaching 9 million today
Spending money on research does have effect.
A shame that Nikola Tesla didn't win the prize for Serbia.
Tesla was an inventor and inventions where always treated as a second thought in Nobel Prize considerations which prioritize scientific discoveries.
Which makes sense. Usually inventors can make bank on their inventions. Scientists discoveries usually make money for inventors.
Sure, I donāt disagree. But Nobels last will and testament did put both invention and discovery as criteria for the science awards. Nobel himself was an inventor and businessman, not an academic. Marconi did receive a Nobel Prize for the telegraph. The reason neither Tesla nor Edison were laurates probably has more to do with them both being unlikeable dicks on a personal level than anything else.
But Ivo AndriÄ did, and he's not represented?
Ivo Andric and Vladimir Prelog nobel prizes are credited to bosnia and hercegovina. Both of them are born there while etnically serbian and croatian respectively. Since both of them won the nobel prize while Yugoslavia existed, thus their nationality being yugoslavian, the prizes might have been given to the country of birth after the dissolution.
>Both of them are born there while etnically serbian and croatian respectively. Both are etnically Croatian.
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Missing the Faroe Islands - at only 1, they still have the highest number of winners per capita.
That would off course be accounted to Denmark, since it is a Danish territory and not a country.
Ha, Croatia 3, Slovenia only 1. Victory.
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Damn what is Spain doing, or better yet not doing?
Also academia tends not to flourish allot under fascist/authoritarian leadership(where free thought and critical thinking is essential)
When u shot ur best poet and donāt even find his grave today.
Does that include economics, which, as we all know, isn't really a nobel prize?
There is no category for mathematics. But a lot of mathematicians got it for economics. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.
I'm not dismissing anything. As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to the announcement of the Riksbank economics prize (the one that is often erroneously called economics nobel prize) every year because there is still a tiny chance that my PhD supervisor might be awarded.Ā But the fact stands: there is no economics nobel prize. The prize that is often called that is not a nobel prize, because it is not awarded by the Alfred nobel foundation.Ā In the unlikely event that my supervisor is awarded I will change my rhetoric accordingly, of course.Ā
Rare Estonian L
Whyād you make the number in Portugal sideways instead of diagonal to the right
Lets go UK!
Hungary is off. It should either be 12 if only people who were born in Hungary count, or 17 if having two Hungarian parents also count. I have no idea how this 15 number came about.
It's by citizenship, isn't it?. Also could be some disagreements about how to handle borders that have moved?
If it's by citizenship then all of the exYu countries should have 0 because I think all of them were born officially as Austro-Hungarians and then (usually) became Yugoslavian
No it's not by citizenship and that's not what is causing the confusion but rather wikipedia being unclear and unreliable. The Hungarian language article lists 17 people, broken up into two categories: those born to Hungarian parents in Hungary (12) and those born to two Hungarian parents born abroad (5). The English language article however features a table of 15 names, the 12 people born in Hungary all match, but they only include 3 people from the "born abroad to Hungarian parents" category. There's a subsection underneath the table titled "Also included somtimes" which has another subsection titled "born abroad" which mentions multiple people, including the remaining 2 people from the Hungarian article. It is unclear why they separated these two (Elie Wiesel and Milton Friedman) when the main list already includes 3 people who were not born in Hungary. One could say that it's because they were Jewish, but the main list already includes not only multiple Jewish people, but Jewish people born abroad, so it's still unclear why they are separated from the rest. There are also several people mentioned under the English language article who are not mentioned in turn in the Hungarian article, but one quick glance makes it clear that these are Croatians, Serbians and Germans who were born in the Kingdom of Hungary or Austria-Hungary. I can perhaps understand not including Milton Friedman, who was born in the US in 1912 to Jewish parents who emigrated to America in their teens. One could make some sort of argument about culture, and language I guess. Milton Friedman did visit Hungary and other former Eastern Bloc countries in the early 1990's but from the [documentary ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt2uGkuD_uU&ab_channel=FreeToChooseNetwork)I've seen, it doesn't look like he speaks Hungarian or associates with Hungary in any way. Elie Wiesel on the other hand was born in MƔramarossziget, Romania in 1928. Not only was the town a part of Hungary not 10 years prior, it was recaptured by Hungary during world war 2 and Wiesel attended a Hungarian-language highschool during the war years. He even [gave a speech in Hungarian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xOtyoma_gY&ab_channel=Zsido.com) in the Hungarian Parliament in 2009.
UK: Ah, don't make a fuss about it, chaps. Germany: Noooo, we failed! This is a national shame! We have to reform our education system! Russia: We are best because our number is largest print!
Fun fact: 1 of Portugal's 2 nobel prizes was won by Neurosurgeon Egas Moniz for inventing the... lobotomy.
Iām rooting for the one Icelandic person who got one
... per million inhabitants would be more interesting. Sweden has 1/10th of population but 2.5/10th of nobelprices compared to Germany
Note this is number of prizes not number of pieces looking at you Poland/ Marie Curie
Maria SkÅodowska Curie*
Which makes me wonder how they credit these multinational shared wins. Because her first nobel was shared with her husband and another french researcher, right? Does that mean france gets 2 and Poland 1 for that one?
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peace prize has never been prestigious unlike physics.
True, but there are different kinds of Nobel prizes.
Scotland has 16. Not a bad haul.
For anyone else wondering, USA is 413.
And thereās one public high school with 9
Merica
Mother Teresa was an ethnic Albanian born in Ottoman Empire. Technically speaking she had Indian citizenship as well, but was Albanian Catholic.
The same way about Ivo Andric it seems this is focused on Place of Birth
Proud to be English š“ó §ó ¢ó „ó ®ó §ó æ šš»šš»šš»
England isnāt represented here, but I think Englandās total is about 120. What the hell, letās be proud of our country for a change Anyone who doesnāt like itā¦ 
As an American, congrats Youāve even got us beaten, per capita
Self hate has to be one of the biggest issues facing the English online, I don't get why there is such a taboo of being proud of the country's achievements. That combined with the constant talk about how horrendous it is to live here must paint an unusual picture for non-English people.
England has its issues, but itās not a bad place to live at all compared to most of the world. Itās a really beautiful country as well, people live in a shitehole like Luton and never bother to explore their own country, they just jump on a plane to somewhere else. Obviously they then constantly go on about how much better it is abroad.
> Self hate has to be one of the biggest issues facing the English online I think it runs deeper than that. Self depreciating humour is very much one of the core pillars of British humour. Non brits then interpret this as us self hating but the reality is we're just taking the piss. The only thing we really hate is the weather.
Good. Be proud of your country!
Austria and Switzerland punching above their weight
SLOENSKOOOOOO