Disparities in Funding for Nobel Prize Awards in Medicine and Physiology Across Nationalities, Races, and Gender

Abstract

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been awarded to numerous individuals for their outstanding contributions. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the Nobel Prize recipients, focusing on gender, race, and nationality. We observe that an alarming disparity emerges when we examine the underrepresentation of Black scientists among Nobel laureates. Furthermore, trends in nationalities show how Americans make up the majority of Nobel Prize winners, while there is a noticeable lack of gender and racial minority winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Together, this highlights the importance of diversity and inclusion in scientific achievement. We offer suggestions and techniques, including funding opportunities and expanding nominators, to improve the gender, racial, and geographical diversity of Nobel Prizes.

Graphical Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world. Yet, do the winners of it reflect the diversity of science? Neikirk et al. show a relative lack of diversity in Nobel Prize winners relative to the overall field and offer suggestions to improve equity in awards and reporting metrics.

Introduction:

The Nobel Prize has long been regarded as a benchmark of scientific excellence and intellectual achievement, especially the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Here, we sought to examine the historical data to consider the representation of minority scientists among Nobel laureates. Across the more than 100-year history, since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to nearly 1000 individuals^[1]. While 113 Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Physiology have been awarded, many of these prizes are shared, with a total of 225 laureates. There are numerous Nobel Prizes, for the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM). The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology represents one of the foremost achievements, as selected by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. This article aims to analyze the representation of the Nobel laureate pool across sex, race, and nationality, shedding light on the systemic issues that contribute to this disparity.

Nobel laureates are funded by a range of sources with most coming from U.S. governmental sources, such as the National Institutes of Health. which ranks as one of the principal institutions for funding work that would later go on to win a Nobel Prize^[2]. Laureates predominantly performed their work in U.S.-based institutions, with Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill having a high proportion of winners, the latter for their contributions to the physics field^[3]. The United Kingdom is the second leading country with Nobel Prize-winning work, with the University of Cambridge serving as the premier institution^[3]. The will of Alfred Nobel, the benefactor of the Nobel prize, specifically states that the award should not consider nationality^[4], yet this may result in implicit bias against non-westernized countries, where the Nobel Prize is often decided. These analyses have shown that, in general, laureates have outstanding university education with work carried out at famous research institutions^[3]. Given that many racial and ethnic minorities remain underrepresented at high-ranking institutions, we expected to see this reflected in disparities among Nobel Prize laureates^[5]. Meta-analyses across over 140 prestigious international awards in science show that, to achieve gender parity, women would need to be awarded 50% more awards, yet this gender gap may arise primarily due to factors such as historical patterns ^[6]. Analyses have also shown that while women remain underrepresented in Nobel Prize awarding, across the past 40 years, women have had a significantly higher rate of being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology^[7]. One analysis found that, with 96% probability, there is bias against women in Nobel Prize awards even when considering for differential recruitment and representation of men and women in STEMM^[8]. In contrast, another study found that when considering relative nomination rates, which are available fifty years after the fact in the case of the Nobel Prize, women have a equal or higher chance to win the award ^[7]. However, analyses comparing Nobel Prize rates across different ethnicities and races remain limited.

The productivity argument for diversity is just one of many^[9], but even negating the injustice of inequity in STEMM, it is important to have a diverse scientific workforce. The lack of representation among Nobel Prize laureates remains a relevant topic to consider. Although demographically underrepresented students drive innovation, their contributions are more likely to go underrecognized^[10]. This has broad implications as Black and other underrepresented individuals are less likely to receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, despite having a comparable background^[11]. Scientific awards, such as the Nobel Prize, can help to influence a myriad of factors affecting the underrepresented in STEMM, including belongingness, which is important for retaining underrepresented individuals as recognitions and awards can show underrepresented students that there are others like them who are succeeding in scientific fields^[12]. Prestigious awards, like the Nobel Prize, are a healthy way to encourage the retention of students and other scientific research professionals of any background^[13]. Finally, role models in STEMM are important across gender and ethnic minorities (see https://news.microsoft.com/europe/features/girls-in-stem-the-importance-of-role-models/). As the retention of Black students lags behind that of their well-represented counterparts^[14], it is essential to facilitate and enhance the recruitment, development, and promotion of diverse individuals in STEMM. Thus, we aimed to understand the diversity of Nobel Prize laureates and the potential implications of these findings on diversity and inclusion in STEMM.

Methods:

As per previous methods ^[15], public access data was utilized to collect demographic details of 225 Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2022 from the Official Nobel Prize website https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-laureates-in-physiology-or-medicine/ and validated against previous analyses and dictionaries, where necessary ^[7,16–19]. Four authors independently classified the winners on the basis of their most accurate nationality, perceived gender, and race.

Specifically, nationality was typically classified on the basis of where individuals were born, affiliated with during research, or died. In cases in which the individual quickly moved to another country or another country more accurately reflects their nationality, individuals were judged on the basis of these three criteria, as determined from the Official Nobel Prize website. Given the changing of geographical borders in the history of the Nobel Prize, some distinct countries are considered synonymous (e.g., Prussian winners are classified as German or Polish). While these are distinct countries with separate cultures, this was done to better reflect trends across decades, and in all regional analyses (see Figure 2) these decisions will not alter the findings.

Figure 2. Cumulative Wins by National Region.

(A) Total cumulative wins. (B) Relative percentage of winners from each region by decade (note: number of winners varies on a decade-by-decade basis). N = 225.

As previously validated ^[16], Nobel prize winners were racialized on the basis of four independent individuals’ assumptions of photos and language on the Nobel Prize website. In every case of disagreement, previous biographies were reviewed to validate race ^[20–24]. While race is a broad spectrum, here, we use the US Census categories of White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander ^[25]. Given a lack of available data, ethnicity was not considered.

While gender and sex are both socially-constructed to a degree ^[26], and without contact with the Nobel Prize winners we could not validate either their sex or gender, we used a combination of several proxies to predict their gender, as previously used in publications to predict gender ^[16]. Specifically, we used a combination of outward display of gender expression classification in a binary system of male and women, pronouns (he/she/they) in news reports describing them and Nobel Prize’s official website (see https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/, Accessed September 20^th 2023), and previous analyses to validate the gender of each Nobel Prize winner ^[8]. Based on these proxies, all individuals presented as either male or female and there were not instances of no instances of the use of the terms they/them/theirs, ze/hir/hirs, or “other,” so gender is treated binary in the following results, although it remains an important limitation in not being able to account for the full gender spectrum, as previous studies have discussed ^[16].

All data presentation was facilitated by GraphPad Prism 10 (La Jolla, San Diego) or Excel (Microsoft, Redmond, Washington). All raw data is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Results:

We examined the relative racial and gender makeup of Nobel Prize laureates (Figure 1). Notably, the first woman was not awarded a Nobel Prize until the 1930s, while the first (and only) non-White woman was not awarded until the 2010s. Furthermore, the number of Nobel Prize laureates generally increased before plateauing in the 1950s; however, during this time frame, racial and gender diversity did not significantly change. Starting in the 1970s, more women and Asians were awarded, and this rate has remained mostly constant. Notably, no Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander individuals have won yet; of underrepresented minorities, only one Asian woman has won as compared to other minoritized women. Because Nobel Prize laureates have been predominantly White, we were unable to run Bayesian interference models to consider bias, as no Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander individuals have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Figure 1. Relative Race and Sex of Nobel Laurates Across Decades Awarded.

Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander males and females were omitted due to no winners to display. N=225.

From there, we compared the relative count of Nobel laureates from different nationalities across each decade (Figure 2A). While ethnicity is a useful measure, the published statistics make it unclear and limited for analysis. For example, while 6 individuals from Latin America or Spain won, to our knowledge, only two of them, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1906) ^[27], and Severo Ochoa (1959) ^[28], were born to Hispanic/Spanish/Latino parents. Similarly, while two individuals have South-African nationality, neither were Black based on our analyses.

Abstractly, it is clear that despite not winning any awards until the 1930s, Americans have won the majority of awards (Figure 2). While there are few Asian laureates, when you disaggregate, it is clear the recipients have come from China, Japan, or India with no Southeast Asian winners ^[29]. Similarly, all of the limited individuals from South Africa who have received the Nobel Prizes were White. Likewise, Britain and commonwealth countries (in this analysis we included India in Asian quantifications, even though many individuals who won in India were British nationals at the time of their research), as well as German scientists, have won the bulk of awards. While Western and Northern Europe are moderately well-represented, outside of Austria, few winners have originated from the Middle East or Eastern Europe. Specifically, we observed a single Lebanese-born Armenian American awardee and only a few from modern-day Poland. We also noticed that many individuals had either multiple citizenships or conflicting birthplaces and affiliations, showing that, although individuals were assigned a single country of origin that most closely fit their trajectory, many had multiple countries of affiliation.

By comparing the Nobel laureates by nationality and decade, certain trends can be observed (Figure 2B; Table 1). Early on, the Nobel Prize laureates came from a relatively wide variety of countries, with individuals identifying as Danish, Russian, Italian, and French. From the 1940s-1980s, Americans and British/Commonwealth individuals came to dominate these categories, while German and French scientists remained as other significant populations. While a relatively large proportion of Asians won for the first time during the 2010s, it is unclear if this trend will continue.

Table 1:

Specific Countries of Origin for Nobel Prize Winners. N=225.

1900s				11
	British	1	9%
	Danish	1	9%
	French	1	9%
	German	1	9%
	Italian	1	9%
	Polish	2	18%
	Russian	2	18%
	Spanish	1	9%
	Swiss	1	9%
1910s				6
	Austrian/Hungarian	1	17%
	Belgian	1	17%
	French	2	33%
	German	1	17%
	Swiss	1	17%
1920s				11
	Austrian/Hungarian	1	9%
	British	2	18%
	Canadian	1	9%
	Danish	2	18%
	Dutch	2	18%
	French	1	9%
	German	1	9%
	Scottish	1	9%
1930s				14
	American	4	29%
	Austrian/Hungarian	2	14%
	Belgian	1	7%
	British	3	21%
	German	4	29%
1940s				14
	American	5	36%
	Argentinian	1	7%
	Australian/New Zealand	1	7%
	Austrian/Hungarian	1	7%
	Danish	1	7%
	German	1	7%
	Portuguese	1	7%
	Scottish	1	7%
	Swiss	2	14%
1950s				20
	American	10	50%
	French	1	5%
	German	3	15%
	Polish	1	5%
	South African	1	5%
	Spanish	1	5%
	Swedish	1	5%
	Swiss	1	5%
	Ukranian/Russian	1	5%
1960s				25
	American	7	28%
	Australian/New Zealand	3	12%
	Austrian/Hungarian	1	4%
	Brazilian	1	4%
	British	3	12%
	Canadian	1	4%
	French	3	12%
	German	3	12%
	Indian	1	4%
	Italian	1	4%
	Russian	1	4%
1970s				25
	American	10	40%
	Austrian/Hungarian	2	8%
	Belgian	1	4%
	British	3	12%
	Dutch	1	4%
	French	1	4%
	German	1	4%
	Italian	1	4%
	Polish	1	4%
	South African	1	4%
	Swedish	1	4%
	Swiss	1	4%
	Romanian	1	4%
1980s				23
	American	11	48%
	Argentinean	1	4%
	British	1	4%
	Danish	1	4%
	French	1	4%
	German	1	4%
	Italian	1	4%
	Japanese	1	4%
	Scottish	1	4%
	Swedish	3	13%
	Venezuelan	1	4%
1990s				20
	American	13	65%
	Australian/New Zealand	1	5%
	British	1	5%
	German	4	20%
	Swiss	1	5%
2000s				26
	American	9	35%
	Australian/New Zealand	3	12%
	British	7	27%
	French	2	8%
	German	1	4%
	Italian	1	4%
	South African	1	4%
	Swedish	2	8%
2010s				24
	American	10	42%
	British	3	13%
	Canadian	1	4%
	Chinese	1	4%
	German	1	4%
	Irish	1	4%
	Japanese	4	17%
	Luxembourgian	1	4%
	Norwegian	2	8%
2020s				6
	American	3	50%
	Armenian American	1	17%
	British	1	17%
	Swedish	1	17%

Discussion:

This analysis highlights the exclusion of Black scientists, as well as the persistent underrepresentation of women, non-White, non-American, and non-Western Europeans among Nobel laureates, shedding light on the need for greater diversity and inclusivity in scientific recognition. Although progress has been made in recent years, with an increasing number of women and Asians receiving Nobel Prizes (Figure 1), there is room for improvement. While Black individuals have received Nobel Prizes in Literature (4 individuals) and Peace (12 individuals), it is disheartening to note the absence of Black scientists among Nobel laureates in the scientific fields of chemistry, medicine, and physiology. Similarly, while 19 Asians or Asian Americans have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (see https://latinamericanpost.com/42327-nobel-prize-winners-not-very-diverse-or-a-reflection-of-society, accessed July 31^st 2023), no Black individuals have been awarded this recognition. In general, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine is actually more gender diverse than the physics and chemistry prizes, yet it is still far from diverse^[30]. It is striking that even by comparison to the other relatively non-diverse laurate pools, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, exhibits the least diversity in both gender and race, with only one non-White woman having received this distinction.

In addition to race, considering the Nobel laureate pool through an ethnic lens further accentuates the lack of representation. For instance, while some Latin American individuals have been recognized with Nobel Prizes, with three laureates hailing from this region, these regions can be further diversified. For example, no individuals from Central America have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Similarly, less than 10 Asian individuals have been awarded, suggesting a Western bias that it is even more transparent due to the lack of Southeastern Asian, Korean, and Chinese laureates. While typically aggregated with Asians, Southeastern Asians face challenges in both representation and retention within STEMM fields^[29,31]. As previously written extensively about ^[19], Japan may have a relatively higher rate of Nobel Prize winners due to earlier participation in STEMM than other Asian countries, with some of the Asian Nobel Prize winners not conducting research in Asia ^[19]. Together, this paints a clear picture as while STEMM diversity today is increasing^[32], Nobel Prize selections lag behind due to biases ^[8] and reflecting discoveries made decades ago, when STEMM was less diverse. Together, our observations emphasize the need to address racial and ethnic disparities to foster a more inclusive scientific community.

We also note other disparities, including in the countries with the most awards, which have previously been highlighted^[33]. This is to not say that awards should be considered on the basis of countries, as done by tabulation in the early 20^th century ^[17], but rather to place focus on the potential inequities in access to opportunities among countries. In part, these disparities may arise due to the institutions and resources available in different countries, such as India, which lacks training for scientific writing, compared with the resources of dominant countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom ^[33]. Beyond this, knowledge recency may arise, as recently it has been shown that Nobel Prize-winning work often arises on the basis older references ^[34]; notably, English-speaking countries are more likely to use older references than non-English speaking countries ^[34]. These same factors likely influence the lack of Latin American, Southeast Asian, and African Nobel Prize recipients.

A striking finding we observe is the high quantity of immigrants among Nobel Prize winners, validating previous reports showing that around 30% of all awardees since 2000 in the United States are immigrants ^[35]. While this complicates assigning a single nationality, it also shows the importance of international collaboration for producing Nobel-quality work. However, in countries such as the United States, where the majority of Nobel-winning work is carried out, STEM faculty may find numerous difficulties in the immigration process ^[36]. We believe increasing access for international students to attend institutions abroad by offering fellowships to low-income countries, such as the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program or Chevening Scholarship, is important, as increasing access to the top research institutions may lead to greater diversity among Nobel Prize laureates. Beyond increased ease of immigration for scientists, many of these disparities will require broader solutions to address, including increased international funding for institutions in developing regions to win. This can create a positive feedback loop through which developing countries are increasingly recognized for the research they are performing, thus earning more funding, to allow for higher quality research to be performed ^[3].

Notably, our data suggest that this issue must first be addressed domestically, considering the poor diversity among U.S. Nobel Prize laureates. The lack of Black individuals and women is especially pressing as many of these individuals are working at premier institutions in the countries with the most Nobel Prize laureates. For example, of tenure-track faculty at Harvard University, a top Nobel Prize-producing institution, 45% of staff are women and nearly 20% are not White or Asian (see https://faculty.harvard.edu/current-annual-report). While these numbers still lag behind the diversity of the U.S. population as a whole, they are highly more diverse than the current and past Nobel Prize laureate pool. Thus, in our solutions, we focus on systematic changes that promote equal opportunities, dismantle structural barriers, and foster an inclusive environment for all scientists.

Solutions

Focus on Nominees Not Awards

It has been suggested that the principal way to change the diversity of the Nobel Prize is increasing the number of awards; however, this may be an ineffective approach. One factor is that there are only 12 laureates per year across all categories, which means that many major achievements go unawarded^[37]. While awards have increased slightly since their establishment (Figure 2), when compared to the massive growth of innovation in biomedical sciences, these awards have only become more competitive^[37]. Additionally, the current Nobel Prize groups together all of medicine and physiology, neglecting other important fields, such as mathematics and computer science ^[37]. While this is a necessary change, this alone will not address the lack of diversity among Nobel Prize recipients. Indeed, the principal reason for the lack of diversity may not arise from biases in the selection committee, as there is also poor gender representation even when considering a larger pool of applicants^[8]. Interestingly, a prior study found that women nominees have a slightly higher chance of winning than men nominees (roughly 1.3% vs 1.2% chances)^[7]. After coming under scrutiny recently, the Nobel Foundation has increased the diversity of selection committees and allowed for candidates to be proposed partially on the basis of diversity and geography. However, the overall rates of diversity have remained unchanged, likely due to women already having a slightly higher chance of winning if nominated. Furthermore, this does not change the fact that there are 50 times more men nominated for Nobel Prizes than women^[7]. Not only are women underrepresented in some STEMM fields, they are often cited less and have decreased access to high-ranking editorial boards which limits their ability to build their recognitions^[38,39].

These nomination rates suggest additional disparities that cannot be solely attributed to a lack of retention. It is important for the Nobel Foundation to transparently report all nomination data across races and ethnicity to consider if there are biases in the selection process; however, this data has been kept confidential for 50 years, which limits the ability to develop initiatives if there are nomination or selection biases^[30]. Similarly, we are unable to look at the relative diversity of recent nominees which also limits the ability of our analysis. However, based on this prior data regarding women, it is possible that most of the lack of diversity in Nobel Prize selection arises due to a lack of nominations.

An important component of the lack of diverse nominations, which cannot be analyzed due to nominees not being publicly available, may arise from the nominators, as often nominators are limited to the membership of national academies or other specific criteria^[30]. Many of these national academies are not diverse, such as the U.S. National Academy of Science, which had more than three Black inductees out of 120 new inductees for the first time ever in 2021^[40]. Furthermore, while there may not be a specific age preference for Nobel Prize recipients^[41], many nominators are older or more senior scientists. Given recent improvements in the recruitment of Black individuals, this negatively impacts older generations of Black scientists who may have more limited connections among these exclusive networks of nominators. While for the first time in 2019, the Nobel Foundation has asked nominators to consider diversity and highlighted that multiple individuals can be nominated; however, these changes have yet to create a sizable impact as the Nobel committee has rejected to maintain certain quotas around sex, gender, or race, even in the aggregate nomination-level^[30]. However, these guidelines neglect the fact that many Black individuals are dealing with inherent disadvantages, despite their high-quality science. Thus, an important next step should be increasing the number of nominators. While the Nobel Foundation has stated that female nominators are no more likely to nominate female individuals^[4], statements on the effect of increasing ethnic and racial diversity of nominators have not been made.

In the future, changes may expand the number of individuals nominated and require that a small number of nominees come from a variety of backgrounds. For example, requiring 5 nominees and that 1/5 of nominees are from underrepresented groups can ensure that all deserving individuals are being nominated. This may also allow community- or health disparity-based research, which Black scientists often propose, to also be nominated alongside more traditional benchwork ^[42]. While expanding nominations will require the Nobel Committee, currently three individuals can still be nominated with all of these nominations often not being used. Institutions can aid in making use of these nominations by encouraging a shift away from implied criteria that limits the nomination of underrepresented individuals and offering resources to nominators to aid them in preparing to nominate more candidates. Beyond this, there is an importance of not imposing limits on the number of nominees by an institution and not only nominating individuals from certain departments or institutions.

Visibility of Black and Underrepresented Scientists

Equally important is increasing the visibility and recognition of Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander scientists. While all of these demographic populations have no winners, it is especially concerning in the context Black individuals, who constitute around 5% of all scientists ^[43]. Despite more diverse staff and laboratories resulting in more innovative scientific techniques^[10], Black scientists receive fewer citations and spots on journal editorial boards^[44]. These factors negatively impact the ability of Black scientists to be promoted across a range of fields. Women, even those who have won Nobel Prizes, have a lower publication index than their male counterparts^[8]. Thus, it is important to remove barriers in publications to provide underrepresented minorities greater visibility and more opportunities to be cited. In terms of retention, fixing these disparities involves not only wanting diversity in name, but also having a willingness to actively improve faculty recruitment, development, and promotion practices, such as by changing the strategies of faculty hiring committees that fail to increase diversity over a set time frame^[45]. Institutions can similarly promote their underrepresented faculty by highlighting their work and dedicated media committees for the newsworthy contributions of underrepresented minorities.

While the Nobel Prize committee has made it clear they recognize the importance of increasing diversity, such as through a Q&A in 2019 with Nature^[4], the commitment may be more exclusively placed on sex and gender. Because Alfred Nobel’s will specifically states that the award should not consider nationality^[4], more emphasis may be placed on sex and gender alone than ethnicity or intersectionality, which are equally important. While the Nobel’s official stance is that science should be judged purely on the merits of the impact of the science. This stance neglects the literature that shows the prevalence of implicit bias, which can be reduced by blinding award nominators to the sex and ethnicity of the nominees^[46,47]. In the case of the Nobel Prize, due to systems such as nomination content including gendered/ethnic language and relative popularity of nominated individuals, blinded reviews are not easily possible, yet it raises the importance of considering scientific achievement in the context of life-accomplishment, overcoming obstacles with limited resources, and research that goes beyond exclusively benchwork. Past data-supported articles offer techniques on how to improve award mechanisms, which include similar principles and others, such as increasing the training of nominators and selection committees, as well as making certain adjustments for minority candidates ^[47]. For example, more superlative nominations or letters of recommendation are often made by men than women which can limit the rate of women laurates even when increasing the number of women nominators ^[47]. Thus, active steps are necessary to equitably consider and recognize the work of the diverse pool of scientists.

Funding

One important option is increasing the equitability of funding. A past analysis of 93 papers related to the Nobel-awarded work verified that less than 10% of them had no funding sources^[2]. The vast majority had funding came from major U.S.-based institutions, such as the NIH and the National Science Foundation^[2]. The NIH has implemented diversity supplements, which offer funding to mentor individuals who are historically underrepresented in biomedical science, for R01 grants ^[48]. Encouragingly, the frequency of these awards has dramatically increased in medical schools, but the amount of diversity supplements relative to R01 quantity remains limited indicating that these programs can be further expanded ^[48]. However, a major barrier to increasing funding to Black and other underrepresented investigators is topic choice, as they frequently propose community-based research that focuses on reducing health disparities ^[42]. Therefore, more inclusive grant review boards that recognize the importance of these topics, as well as increased funding for diverse applicants, can help underrepresented investigators receive additional grants that are often necessary preceptors for Nobel Prize-winning work.

Other Awards

While we have focused on the Nobel Prize, many national awards have large gender and racial disparities. While the Lasker Awards has improved in diversity over time, the actual proportion of women winners has not significantly increased since its establishment ^[16]. In example, Orthopedic Surgery Societies show an unequal gendered distribution of awards, with many females receiving diversity awards instead of leadership awards^[46]. Past analyses have been performed in numerous medical specialties and show that most specialties’ awards historically have and continue to underrepresent women ^[49,50]. Similarly, from the limited data available, national medical societies also report an underrepresentation of women and minority awardees ^[51], with such awardees often winning humanity-centered awards^[52–55]. While some medical specialties, such as Gastroenterology and Hepatology, have well-represented awards, many awards do not report all of the demographical information to follow allow for consideration of diversity ^[56]. begun While diversity awards have been proposed to counteract these systematic biases, they may not be an optimal solution. Past research has shown that less lucrative diversity awards cause well-qualified candidates to forgo applying for unrestricted awards despite being competitive applicants^[57]. Thus, a better strategy is to increase the diversity of already established leadership awards to match the selection pool. Changing the Nobel Prize diversity pool through the new mechanisms proposed here can have a top-down impact by altering other awards and paving the way for showing that diversity matters in all awards, not just diversity awards.

Conclusion:

Diversity fatigue in academia remains a pressing issue as diversity, equity, and inclusion training and other common initiatives by DEI offices can erode support for improving equitability^[58]. However, changing the equitability of awards can have a large impact by modifying public opinion and highlighting that the “best” scientists come from a range of genders, ethnicities, and races. Certain steps, such as the introduction of gender and racial quotas, may go a long way in making the Nobel Prize more equitable, but these actions are unlikely to happen (see https://abcnews.go.com/International/nobel-prize-foundation-fire-rejecting-ethnic-sex-quotas/story?id=80536436). Furthermore, while past studies have found that standard processes such as blinded awards increase the diversity of awardees^[46], the very nature of Nobel Prizes make these changes nearly impossible. Thus, here we have proposed actionable changes to increase diversity.

In this, we show that the Nobel committee strongly promotes Western institutions and White winners. While their scientific contributions are indelible, these winners are far less diverse than the field as a whole. Additionally, our analysis does not even consider winners that include individuals with disabilities ^[59], LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other historically underrepresented underserved groups (see Limitations). Considerations for Nobel Prize winners may also include consideration of their science in the context of their background and recognizing science in the broader context of their contributions.

Several valuable research questions remain for the field. One other aspect to consider is the psychological aspects of aiming to win the Nobel Prize. For example, the prestige of the Nobel Prize and the belief it may lead to more funding nationwide has previously been discussed as a motivational factor for Asian countries seeking to win their first Nobel Prize ^[19]. While it is unclear if this is the case, future research may investigate the public impacts of perceptions of a country’s overall scientific rigor following winning a Nobel Prize. Beyond this, compared to men, women laureates are significantly less likely to get married and have children ^[15], indicating that women may need to devote more to their professional lives to win than men. Similarly, Black scientists as a whole are furthermore likely to be subjected to toxic stress and microaggressions ^[60,61]. Thus, one area that remains understudied is how striving to earn the Nobel Prize affects work-life balance and the relative differences in societal stress of Nobel Prize winners on the basis of their gender, race, and nationality.

Here, we are not insinuating that Nobel Prizes or scientific awards should be awarded based on race instead of merit, but rather that current practices employed in the selection of these awards can actively work against those from minoritized groups, and fuel stereotypes that lead to underrepresented individuals leaving scientific fields, ultimately having a negative effect as innovation is reduced ^[10]. These changes can pave the way for a future where scientific excellence is not limited by gender, race, or ethnicity, but rather flourishes through the contributions of a diverse and vibrant scientific community. These changes are unlikely to affect the diversity of Nobel Prize laureates in the short term, as many are not awarded for decades; yet, if action is not taken now, it is likely that the Nobel Prize will remain just as homogenous in the future.

Limitations:

We utilized a publicly available database alongside publicly available laboratory websites, biographies, and descriptions of laurates, which may have certain inaccuracies in reporting of gender, race, and country of primary origin, on the basis of either being born there or spending most of their life there. Notably, in this study countries of origin were selected on the basis of primary affiliation, not necessarily place of birth. Thus, in some cases, individuals were born in certain occupied countries, but spent the majority of their life and were affiliated with other countries. Beyond this, country borders are constantly changing, so in some cases individuals defined from regions such as Poland or Germany technically originated in what was Prussia before its collapse. Similarly, for ease of visualization, Russia was used synonymously with the Russian empire, given limited winners coming from post-collapse USSR territories.

Due to a lack of adequate reporting, several key categories are neglected, including sexual identity, disability status (the largest minority group in STEMM) ^[59], specific gender identity, and ethnicity. While we sought to validate gender, race, and country of origin in all reasonable measures, given that these factors are subjective measures that we could not ask the Nobel Prize winners about, there may be minor errors in these relative counts. For example, sex, as a mostly biological factor, could not be considered, so we attempted to determine the gender of each winner on the basis of usage of pronouns, outward gender expression, and previous publications. However, the full spectrum of gender identity could not be considered. Equally so, we utilize United States census-based definitions of race, which may not accurately apply to racial categories in a global context. While every attempt was made to guarantee accuracy, small errors may be present, but these still will not affect the overall findings of this study. In the future, more widely available demographic information and data collection by the Nobel committee could alleviate these issues and allow for more in-depth analysis. Beyond this, the limited data of racial and gender minorities in this study did not permit statistical analysis, relegating the present study to being principally descriptive. In the future, having nominations be released in a faster timeframe, such as within 10 years, could allow for a wider sample size to consider the demographics of nominee data for more in-depth analysis.

Data Availability Statement:

Raw data is publicly available or available upon request to the corresponding author.