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Countries with the most Nobel Prizes
Which country has given the world the most Nobel Prizes? Counting the birthplace of the 990 individual laureates, the table below ranks 86 countries. United States leads by a wide margin, but the ranking hides surprises once you look at who emigrated.
Ranking by the laureate's country of birth
| # | Country | Laureates | First | First laureate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 296 | 1906 | Theodore Roosevelt |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 94 | 1903 | Randal Cremer |
| 3 | Germany | 84 | 1901 | Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen |
| 4 | France | 63 | 1901 | Frédéric Passy |
| 5 | Sweden | 30 | 1903 | Svante Arrhenius |
| 6 | Japan | 30 | 1949 | Hideki Yukawa |
| 7 | Russia | 29 | 1904 | Ivan Pavlov |
| 8 | Poland | 28 | 1901 | Emil von Behring |
| 9 | Canada | 22 | 1923 | Frederick G. Banting |
| 10 | the Netherlands | 20 | 1901 | Jacobus H. van 't Hoff |
| 11 | Italy | 20 | 1906 | Camillo Golgi |
| 12 | Switzerland | 19 | 1901 | Henry Dunant |
| 13 | Austria | 19 | 1911 | Alfred Fried |
| 14 | Norway | 13 | 1903 | Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson |
| 15 | Denmark | 12 | 1908 | Fredrik Bajer |
| 16 | Hungary | 12 | 1937 | Albert Szent-Györgyi |
| 17 | China | 12 | 1956 | Walter H. Brattain |
| 18 | Scotland | 11 | 1904 | Sir William Ramsay |
| 19 | Australia | 10 | 1915 | Lawrence Bragg |
| 20 | India | 9 | 1902 | Ronald Ross |
| 21 | Belgium | 9 | 1909 | Auguste Beernaert |
| 22 | South Africa | 9 | 1951 | Max Theiler |
| 23 | Spain | 7 | 1904 | José Echegaray |
| 24 | Czech Republic | 6 | 1905 | Bertha von Suttner |
| 25 | Egypt | 6 | 1964 | Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin |
Why the United States pulls so far ahead
Adding up all six categories, United States counts 296 laureates born on its soil, about 30% of every individual Nobel winner in history. United Kingdom is second with 94 and Germany third with 84. The American lead is largely a postwar story: the flight of scientists from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and the money poured into research after 1945 turned United States universities into the destination for anyone doing frontier science.
The ranking counts country of birth, not of work, so it penalizes migrants: several of the "Americans" near the top were born in Germany, Hungary or Russia. Marie Curie, counted here as Polish, is still the only person awarded in two different sciences. Brazil shows a single laureate born on Brazilian soil, Peter Medawar, the 1960 Medicine winner. To see who won what each year, explore the category pages (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, Economic Sciences) and the year by year Nobel archive.
Source: official nobelprize.org API (CC0), snapshot of 2026-07-09. This site is independent and is not affiliated with the Nobel Foundation; the prize name appears descriptively only. Award winning organizations, such as the Red Cross, are excluded from this count, which considers people only.
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Last updated: · Methodology and sources