What makes a Nobel prize winner? How many Nobel laureates are women, how old was the youngest winner – and how many Americans?
The 2015 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences will be announced at midday today, rounding up this year’s Nobel Prize announcements after last week’s flurry of winners including the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, which took home the controversial Peace Prize and Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich, who was awarded the Literature Prize.
To mark the event, we’ve taken a closer look at what makes a Nobel prize winner? And who, exactly, has been awarded a Nobel Prize throughout the award’s 104-year-history?
You may already know that the US has the most Nobel laureates – but did you know a full one-third of the prizes ever awarded have gone to America?
There’s no need for Britons to feel embarrassed, though, as the United Kingdom comes in as clear runner-up, with 119 winners. Germany takes third place with 104 Nobel laureates.
However, if we're talking top Nobel Prize winners in each country per capita then Switzerland and Sweden are tied for first place.
As for the proportion of female winners, it’s no huge surprise that historically, extremely few Nobel laureates – particularly in the sciences categories – have been women.
Just 48 women have won the Nobel Prize in its 104 year history. The most notable winner is Marie Curie who took the Nobel Prize twice, firstly in physics (1903) and then again in chemistry (1911).
Things are beginning to look up, however, as the proportion of female winners has quadrupled since 1980, after decades of essentially flatlining.