Nobel Prize Winners by Region
Question #1: What Regions Have Won the Most and Fewest Nobel Prizes?
This illustrates some interesting things about the Nobel Prize distribution.
Question #2: The US and Canada + Western Europe + Eastern Europe Have Won 89% of the Nobel Prizes.
And the picture changes if peace prizes are removed from the calculation. If the peace prizes are removed, these regions rise to 91%. What is curious is that the combined populations of these regions are the following according to World O Meter.
- United States = 332,488,264
- Canada = 37,996,663
- Western Europe = 196,623,518
- Eastern Europe = 292,684,408
This is a total of around 960 M. This is out of 7.86 B. This means that 12% of the world population is responsible for 89% of the Nobel Prize awards.
If one removes Russia from Eastern Europe, this reduces the population by 146 M, taking the base down to 814 M, but only reducing the Nobel Prizes by 31. This reduces the number of Nobel Prizes won among this most productive group from 1026 to 995.17, which is then 86% of the total Nobel Prizes awarded. This means that this group, with a little over 10% of the world population, generated 86% of the Nobel Prize award winners.
Question #3: Where is Africa and the Middle East?
Some regions like Africa and the Middle East have only combined to account for 3.6% of the Nobel Prizes. The entire continent of Africa, which in part overlaps into the Middle East, has a population of 1.34 B, which is 17% of the world's population. The problematic feature of how the population is counted is that the Middle East is counted in Asian population numbers and is not broken out as a separate region.
However, once the peace price is removed from the calculation, the total number of Nobel Prizes won by these two regions is only 10. And of these, 10, 7, or 70% were won by South Africans. Only one of these South African award winners, Allan M Cormack, was not white.
This means that only 15 non-whites in Africa and the Middle East have won non-peace Nobel Prizes. Once the Middle East is removed, leaving Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, only one non-white African has ever won a non-peace Nobel Prize.
This is Wole Soyinka, from Nigeria, who won for Literature in 1986.
Question #4: How About Asia?
Asia has an enormous population at 4.46 B or roughly 60% of the world population. However, north Asia is only responsible for 49 or 3.7% of all Nobel Prizes, while Southeast Asia barely exists in the Nobel arena at .5% of all Nobel Prizes. Southeast Asia has a shocking total of only 2 non-peace Nobel Prize winners (and 5 Peace Nobel Prize Winners). Every winner of the Nobel Prize for Indian extraction won when India was under British control (2) or when the Indian immigrated to another country (5).
Question #5: Latin America and the Caribbean
Another very poorly performing region is Latin America. Latin America has only ever won 12 Nobel Prizes and only 14 non-peace Nobel Prizes. This is only 1.8% of all Nobel Prizes, however, Latin America and the Caribbean have 653 M people or 8.7% of the world's population.
Conclusion
The number of Nobel Prizes won drops dramatically outside of either Europe and European-based countries. The low relative number of Noble Prizes in Eastern Europe (even after lagging Russia is taken out of the numbers) indicates a significant difference between these regions.