Countries compete for the most Nobel Prize winners, with the US leading with over 300. However, some worry that the US is losing ground in science. The awards are seen as a litmus test for a country’s success in producing innovators, but gender and race representation is also important.
Usually, most countries have a merry competition regarding the number of Nobel Prize winners. The US clearly led the pack with over 300. The UK and Germany each hold more than 100, while France has just over half that number and Russia slightly fewer. Sweden and Switzerland each hold more than 20, while Italy, Canada, Japan and many other countries are not far behind.
If it takes a village to raise a child, then one could say it takes a country to raise Nobel Prize winners. The awards are often designed to bestow honor not only on the individual winners, but also on their country of origin. However, that wasn’t always the case; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the prize for literature, but his writings forced him into exile from the Soviet Union. Honor felt more like a slap in the face to the now defunct USSR.
In weighing up the numbers, some worry that the United States is losing ground, particularly in science over the past 15 years. American researchers won the most science awards in the 1960s. While US citizens still earn just over 50% of those allotted in this field, this is far less than in previous years.
Some see these awards as a litmus test for a country’s success in producing innovators and developers. They point to the dwindling number of Nobel Prize winners to Americans as a representative of the lagging United States in the crucial development of the sciences. Others suggest that these figures aren’t just proof, however, and may simply mean that other countries are now catching up and building on scientific development. Britain and Japan are now second and third in science awards in a measurement of the past 15 years.
Nobel laureates could also be analyzed by gender or race, rather than by country. Over the last 10-15 years, there seems to have been a very specific attempt to include women and races that have not been adequately represented. This is not always the case, but there may be a more even grouping of winners in the future. Much of this will be based on the economic and educational opportunities available in individual countries, for people of both sexes and for those in developing countries of a particular race.
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