Question History:

Patron: Which U.S. college has educated the most Nobel Laureates?

Librarian 1: Dear Mr. Basler:

I have not found a comprehensive list of Nobel Laureates by undergraduate or graduate affiliation. The top schools in the United States for total Nobel Prizes awarded are: Harvard, Stanford, M.I.T., CalTech, and Columbia, and tied with Berkeley is University of Chicago.

California Institute of Technology
"Caltech [California Insitute of Technology] has over 20,000 living alumni—of whom 17 are Nobel Prize-winning scientists—and has produced leaders in almost every field imaginable"
< http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/about/notable >
See also < http://one.caltech.edu/who_we_are/# >, click on Nobel Laureates.

University of California, Berkeley
"Your fellow Cal graduates include 24 Nobel laureates (20 of them L&S alumni), as well as Olympians, heads of state and political leaders, novelists, entrepreneurs, entertainers and so many more than we can list." < http://ls.berkeley.edu/?q=alumni/meet-our-alumni >

Columbia College
"Columbia College, which has graduated more Nobel laureates in science than any other American college" < http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol21/vol21_iss10/record2110.15.html >
See also < http://dark-legion.org/en/List%20of%20Columbia%20University%20people >

"Nine Nobel laureates claim CCNY as their Alma Mater, the most from any public college in the United States;" < http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/advancement/pr/presskit/ >

Columbia University
< http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/nobel_laureates/by_year.html >
City University of New York
"Success of CUNY Graduates
CUNY Alumni boasts of 12 Nobel Prize winners, other distinguished alumni includes General Colin Powell , former US Secretary of State; Andrew Grove , Chairman of Intel Corporation and TIME Man of The Year; Howard Smith , Vice Chairman of AIG ; and Bernard Schwartz , CEO of Loral Space and Communications" < http://www.sma.edu.sg/programmes-p013.asp >

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"However, for the world outside MIT, the stereotypical MIT alumnus is a researcher. It is no wonder that MIT faculty, staff and alumni have won a total of 35 Nobel prizes, with 15 of these awards received by MIT alumni. " < http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N24/FamousAlumni.24f.html >
See also < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology_alumni#Alumni_Nobel_laureates >

"MIT Nobel Prizes
as of Oct. 6, 2004

Full listing, updated

58 Nobel Prizes
-- 26 physics prizes
-- 10 chemistry prizes
-- 12 economics prizes
-- 8 medicine/physiology prizes
-- 2 peace prizes

Nobel laureates
-- 24 professors
-- 20 alumni
-- 13 researchers
-- 1 staff physician

Laureates at MIT (in reverse chronological order)
-- Frank Wilczek (2004) physics
-- Robert Horvitz (2002) physiology/medicine
-- Wolfgang Ketterle (2001) physics
-- Phillip Sharp (1993) physiology/medicine
-- Jerome Friedman (1990) physics
-- Susumu Tonegawa (1987) medicine/physiology
-- Robert Solow (1987) economics
-- Samuel Ting (1976) physics
-- Paul Samuelson (1970) economics
-- Har Gobind Khorana (1968) medicine/physiology


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 6, 2004 (download PDF). " < http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/nobel-wilczek.html >

University of Illinois at Urbanna Champagne
"Alumni successes
Another prime indicator of the University’s excellence is the success of its alumni: 11 alumni are Nobel laureates, 157 Guggenheim Fellows and another 18 have won Pulitzer Prizes."
< http://publicaffairs.uiuc.edu/facts/world.html >
See also < http://publicaffairs.uiuc.edu/facts/nobel.html >
See also < http://publicaffairs.uiuc.edu/AwardWinners/nobels.htm >
Table 2 - Number of United States Nobel laureates by Institution – twenty year segments from 1947-2006. A minimum of three prizes in one time segment is required for inclusion.


Institution - 1947-66 - 1967-86 - 1987-2006

USA

Harvard - 9 - 13 - 5

Univ. California Berkeley - 7 - 3 - 4

Stanford - 4 - 5 - 9

Caltech - 4 - 4 - 5

Columbia - 4 - 1 - 7

Rockefeller Inst. & Univ. - 3 - 6 - 3

Chicago - 2 - 4 - 7

Princeton - 1 - 2 - 6

MIT - 1 - 5 - 11

Cornell - 1 - 4 - 2

UCLA - 1 - 0 - 3

Yale - 0 - 4 - 1

NIH - National Inst. Health - 0 - 4 - 0

Univ. Colorado, Boulder - 0 - 0 - 4

University of Washington - 0 - 0 - 3

Fred Hutchinson CRC, Seattle - 0 - 0 - 3

Univ. California, Santa Barbara - 0 - 0 - 3

UCSF (U Cal San Fransico) - 0 - 0 - 3

Univ. California, Irvine - 0 - 0 - 3

Nobel Laureates Alma Maters
< http://almaz.com/nobel/alma.html >


Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China Academic Ranking of World Universities produces the World Academic Rankings; you may wish to correspond with them regarding background data on number of alumni with Nobel Prizes < http://www.arwu.org/rank/2007/ranking2007.htm >. "The Shanghai rankings have been criticized [citation needed] for placing too much emphasis on the Nobel prizewinners, as opposed to the broader impact of a university's scientific output. For example, The Times report has also been critical of the Shanghai rankings. In its 2004 report, THES questioned why the Shanghai rankings count only Nobel prizes (note that the 2003 ranking did not include Fields medalists[5]); why the universities where prizewinners studied, some at the turn of the century before last, were credited and why universities where winners carried out their research, often at least 20 years previously, were credited rather than the institution that now benefits from their presence. Arguably, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Ranking also has the effect of biasing the results towards the sciences for which a Nobel prize is awarded (eg there is no Nobel prize for computer science). There are three Nobel prizes for the sciences (chemistry, physics and medicine), one for the social sciences (economics), one for the arts (literature) and the Peace Prize. Universities with staff or alumni holding Fields medals for mathematics are also rewarded, but similar awards for achievement in the arts are not taken into account. Because of its methodology the list ranks almost exclusively research universities and not liberal-arts colleges." Wikipedia

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