Nobel Prizes

Nobel prizes are famous and prone to give status. With science this is fair enough. The peace prize is different; being awarded by fools to rogues. Obama was put in for his eleven days after he got to be the illegal president of America. He picked it up at the time when he was ramping up the war effort in Afghanistan. Another was given to a murderer with warrants outstanding. You can take that sort of idiocy seriously. I do not, albeit the prize money is rather useful. The literature prize is perhaps not quite so ridiculous. Here are the scores by country, including the silly ones. In a lot of cases the country of birth and the country where the work was done are different.

Most of the winners are European. This is a matter of fact. The Australians are just an example. To an extent this is because science was turned into an industry. The Americans caught on to this big time and had the sense to buy in first class men. I would have expected more Israelis but a fair number of Jews are included in other countries.

United States 320

United Kingdom 116

Germany 103

France 57

Sweden 28

Switzerland 25

Russia 23

Austria 21

Italy 20

Canada 18

Netherlands 18

Japan 16

Denmark 13

Poland 12

Belgium 11

Australia 10

Hungary 10

Norway 10

Israel 9

India 9

Spain 7

Ireland 6

China 6 - there are 9 Chinamen but some like Charlie Kao worked overseas.

New Zealand 3

Czech Republic 5

Finland 4

Portugal 2

Algeria 2

Argentina 5

Azerbaijan 1

 Bangladesh 2

Belarus 1

Bosnia and Herzegovina 2

Bulgaria 1

Chile 2

Colombia 1

Costa Rica 1

Croatia 1

East Timor 2

Egypt 4

Faroe Islands 1

Ghana 1

Greece 2

Guatemala 2

Hong Kong 1

Iceland 1

Iran 2

Kenya 1

Korea, South 2

Latvia 1

Lithuania 1

Macedonia 1

Mexico 3

Myanmar (Burma) 1

Nigeria 1

Pakistan 1

Palestine 1

Romania 3

St Lucia 2

Slovakia 1

Slovenia 1

South Africa 9

Taiwan 1

Tibet 1

Trinidad and Tobago 1

 Turkey 1

 Ukraine 3

Venezuela 1

Vietnam 1