American Research Universities and the Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish inventor and manufacturer who became wealthy in the late 19^th century from his 355 inventions, the most well known of which is dynamite. In his will in 1895, he established a significant endowment and procedure by which a set of annual international awards was to be bestowed by a Board representing Swedish and Norwegian institutions. These awards would be granted in recognition of “academic, cultural, and scientific advances that constitute outstanding contributions to humanity”.

Nobel prizes continue to be awarded in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, Economics, Peace, and Literature. Prizes for each of these fields aren’t necessarily granted every year if the Board determines that an award isn’t justified. Single awards are often split among multiple recipients (laureates).

A variable monetary prize ($1.2 million in 2016) accompanies each award. If there are multiple laureates, the monetary prize is divided among them at the discretion of the Board. It’s common, but not required, that laureates donate their prize money to benefit scientific, cultural, or humanitarian causes. Most Nobel Prizes in scientific and economics are awarded to individuals in association with their affiliated institution. In a majority of cases, the affiliated institution is a research university.

Last month, we posted an article titled “America’s Great Research Universities” that described how U.S. academic institutions have risen to the forefront of scientific achievement worldwide. Evidence of this status lies in the 881 Nobel Prizes that have been awarded to laureates associated with American research universities, far more than the universities of any other country. Table A below lists these American universities. They’re ranked by the number of individual and shared Nobel laureates associated with each institution.

Table A: Top 40 American Research Universities – Nobel Laureates

Rank	Institution	Laureates
1	Harvard University	151
2	Columbia University	101
3	University of Chicago	89
4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	83
5	University of California – Berkeley	69
6	Stanford University	58
7	Yale University	52
8	Cornell University	43
9	Princeton University	37
10	Johns Hopkins University	36
11	New York University	35
12	California Institute of Technology	33
13	University of Pennsylvania	29
14	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	24
15	Rockefeller University	24
16	University of Minnesota	23
17	Washington University in St. Louis	22
18	Carnegie Mellon	21
19	University of California – San Diego	20
20	University of Michigan – Ann Arbor	20
21	University of Wisconsin – Madison	19
22	Case Western Reserve University	16
23	University of California – Los Angeles	15
24	City University of New York	13
25	Duke University	12
26	University of Washington – Seattle	12
27	Northwestern University	11
28	University of Colorado – Boulder	11
29	Purdue University	10
30	University of California – Santa Barbara	10
31	University of Texas at Austin	9
32	Boston University	8
33	University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill	8
34	University of Rochester	8
35	Brown University	7
36	University of Southern California	7
37	Vanderbilt University	7
38	Indiana University – Bloomington	7
39	University of Maryland – College Park	7
40	University of Virginia – Charlottesville	7

In addition to the 40 institutions listed above, there are 77 other American colleges and universities that have each been awarded between 1 and 6 Nobel Prizes. However, one should not assume that American research universities are so dominant that scientists and institutions in other countries haven’t also been successful in garnering Nobel Prizes through the years. The top ten non-U.S. Nobel Prize winning institutions are listed in Table B below.

 Table B: Top 10 International Research Universities – Nobel Laureates

Int’l Rank	Institution	Nobel Laureates
3	University of Cambridge – U.K.	90
7	University of Oxford – U.K.	58
10	University of Paris – France	51
11	University of Gottingen – Germany	46
13	Heidelberg University – Germany	41
14	Humboldt University of Berlin – Germany	40
17	Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich – Germany	35
20	ETH Zurich – Switzerland	31
22	University College London – U.K.	27
23	University of Manchester – U.K.	25

The number of Nobel laureates isn’t, by itself, sufficient reason for a student to target a particular institution for admission, but it’s a meaningful factor in the identification of best-fit universities for a science-oriented student. The Nobel Prize is relevant in an assessment of the relative quality of research universities. In fact, third-party ranking services like U.S. News & World Report and Money Magazine use it as part of their calculations.

A rewarding career in science based on an education at one of America’s top-tier research universities is an excellent strategy for a motivated student with the requisite aptitude. If you feel that you are such a student, you should retain the services of IvySelect as your college admissions consulting firm to guide you through the complex admissions process.

IvySelect provides superior comprehensive and individualized counseling based on years of experience in assisting students to attain their educational goals. Some of the elite research institutions to which our students have been admitted include the eight members of the Ivy League; Penn, Columbia, Brown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and Dartmouth, as well as Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, USC, Duke, NYU, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, Caltech, Virginia, Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA.