Nobel: American and British men dominate the award – 09/30/2023 – Science

In which cities in the world do you think most Nobel Prize winners were born? Keep thinking.

Meanwhile, a tip may help: the United States is the biggest Nobel laureate, with almost three times the number of winners compared to second place, the United Kingdom.

American and British men, followed by Germans, are the most numerous winners. The reflection, in the various award-winning research that advanced human knowledge, of the delay and imbalance in the gender issue, something seen in the most diverse areas of everyday life.

American women also top the list, followed by French and German women. Only one British woman is considered to have been laureate, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, who was actually born in Egypt.

Despite the difficulties, the winners were always out there. One of the greatest examples was Marie Curie, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and, as if that weren’t enough, one in Chemistry in 1911.

The announcement of this year’s Nobel laureates begins this Monday morning (2), with the Medicine award. In the following days there will be announcements for Physics (3) and Chemistry (4). Then Literature (5) and Peace (6). The following week, it’s time for the savings prize (9).

The award began to be awarded in 1901. The award originated in the will of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, who left his fortune to those who, in the areas of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace, had promoted the best benefits for the humanity. The inventor died in Italy on December 10, 1896.

Laureates have been increasingly present since the 1980s in the general Nobel awards — around 69% of the prizes awarded to them came from that decade onwards. Looking specifically at scientific areas (medicine, physics and chemistry), the concentration of awards for them in the last four decades is maintained, with almost 71% of laureates in this period.

It was only during the 1900s that, although still with many obstacles, the female presence in universities began to gradually increase. Before, the situation was much more complex around the world.

In 1885, for example, Yale Law School accepted the first woman to the faculty. The legend — which could just be a legend — says that it was by accident, because they looked at the initials and thought that Alice Rufie Blake Jordan was a man. In any case, Yale’s complete opening only came at the end of the 1960s.

Columbia University, in New York, only fully opened its doors to women in 1983, despite several courses accepting them previously. At Harvard, the widest entry into the university came in the 1970s, although some colleges had opened their doors to women earlier, such as the medical school in 1945. In 1972, the so-called “Title IX” (title nine), educational law signed by then-president Richard Nixon, determined equal educational access for women in the USA, decreeing the ban on discrimination and segregation in education based on gender.

Outside the USA, the situation was not so different. In 1927, the University of Oxford — with several institutions dating back to 1500 — placed a maximum quota of women at the university. In 1974, all-male colleges at British universities, such as Jesus College, began accepting women. In 2016, St Benet’s Hall, Oxford’s last all-male educational institution, opened its doors to women.

In Brazil, formally, the first universities were structured in the 20th century, but, logically, there were previous educational institutions.

In the list of most awarded institutions, once again, American universities and institutes stand out, with some British institutions completing the list.

Despite the predominance of data from countries in North America and Europe, some changes have been observed, such as a greater presence of awards from Japan —more than 70% of Japanese awards came after 2000—, which increased the share of award-winning Asian countries.

Meanwhile, the South American presence is more discreet and inconsistent. There are 11 awards, with the first for the field of medicine, in 1947, for the Argentine Bernardo Houssay, “for the discovery of the role of the anterior pituitary hormone in sugar metabolism”, according to the award. Houssay worked at the Instituto de Biologia y Medicina Experimental (translated: Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine). The institution received another Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, in 1970.

The most recent award — for peace — went to former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, in 2016.

Taking into account only the country of birth of the winners, and not the place of work of the researchers and winners, Brazil has a name on the list — but not what one imagines when thinking of a Latin American name: Peter Medawar, winner awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1960 for the discovery of immunological tolerance, he was born in Petrópolis (RJ), but had his higher education and work in the United Kingdom.

Finally: which cities are home to Nobel winners?

Following the logic of the most awarded countries, some of their main cities are there: New York, Paris and London lead the way. But the list of locations spreads and drips into hundreds of cities, many of them with a single illustrious laureate.