This list of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University comprehensively shows the alumni (graduates and attendees), faculty members, researchers, and visiting professors affiliated with Princeton University who were awarded the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. People who have given public lectures, received honorary degrees or served as administrative staff at the university are excluded from the list. Summer school attendees and visitors are generally excluded from the list, since summer terms are not part of formal academic years.
The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. [1] They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. Another prize, the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" (commonly known as the Nobel Economics Prize), was established in 1968 (first awarded in 1969) by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for contributors to the field of economics. [2]
As of October 2021, 74 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Princeton University. Among the 74 laureates, 44 are Nobel laureates in natural sciences; [lower-alpha 1] 22 are Princeton alumni (graduates and attendees) and 28 have been long-term academic members of the Princeton faculty; and subject-wise, 30 laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, more than any other subject. In 2021, Princeton scholars and alumni received an unprecedented five Nobel Prizes. [lower-alpha 2]
Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton University, was the first Princeton-affiliated laureate, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. [3] Five Nobel Prizes (same subject in the same year) were shared by Princeton laureates: James Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics; [4] Russell Alan Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics; [5] David Gross and Frank Wilczek won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; [6] Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims won the 2011 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics; [7] and David Card and Joshua Angrist won the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. [8] In particular, John Bardeen received two Nobel Prizes in Physics, in 1956 and in 1972; since this is a list of laureates, not prizes, he is counted only once. [9]
All types of affiliations, namely alumni, long-term and short-term academic staff, count equally in the following table and throughout the whole page. [lower-alpha 3]
In the following list, the number following a person's name is the year they received the prize; in particular, a number with asterisk (*) means the person received the award while they were working at Princeton University (including emeritus staff). [lower-alpha 4] A name underlined implies that this person has already been listed in a previous category (i.e., multiple affiliations).
No. | Laureate | Year | Image | Affiliation | Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
30 | Syukuro Manabe | 2021 | Senior Meteorologist [10] | "for the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.” [11] (shared with Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi) | |
29 | Roger Penrose | 2020 | Research Fellow; Visiting Researcher [12] | "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity." [13] (shared with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez) | |
28 | Jim Peebles | 2019 | Ph.D. (1962); Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Emeritus [14] | "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology." [15] (shared with Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz) | |
27 | Donna Strickland | 2018 | Researcher, Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Opto-electronic Materials (1992-1997) [16] | "for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses." [17] (shared with Gérard Mourou and Arthur Ashkin) | |
26 | Kip Thorne | 2017 | Ph.D. (1965); Postdoctoral Researcher [18] | "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves" [19] (shared with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish) | |
25 | Rainer Weiss | 2017 | Postdoctoral Researcher [20] | "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." [21] (shared with Kip Thorne and Barry C. Barish) | |
24 | Duncan Haldane | 2016 | Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics [22] | "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter" [23] (shared with David Thouless and J. Michael Kosterlitz) | |
23 | John M. Kosterlitz | 2016 | Visiting Professor (1978) [24] | "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter." [25] (shared with David Thouless and Duncan Haldane) | |
22 | Arthur B. McDonald | 2015 | Professor of Physics [26] | "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass" [27] (shared with Takaaki Kajita) | |
21 | Frank Wilczek | 2004 | M.A., Ph.D. (1975) [28] | "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction" [6] (shared with David Gross and H. David Politzer) | |
20 | David Gross | 2004 | Thomas Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics Emeritus [29] | "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction" [6] (shared with H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek) | |
19 | Riccardo Giacconi | 2002 | Research Associate, Cosmic Ray Laboratory (1958-1959) [30] | "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources." [31] (shared with Masatoshi Koshiba and Raymond Davis Jr.) | |
18 | Daniel Chee Tsui | 1998 | Arthur Legrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering [32] | "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations" [33] (shared with Robert B. Laughlin and Horst Ludwig Störmer) | |
17 | Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. | 1993 | James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics [34] | "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation" [5] (shared with Russell Alan Hulse) | |
16 | Russell Alan Hulse | 1993 | Principal research physicist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory [35] | "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation" [5] (shared with Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.) | |
15 | James Cronin | 1980 | Professor of physics [36] | "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons" [4] (shared with Val Logsdon Fitch) | |
14 | Val Logsdon Fitch | 1980 | Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics [37] | "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons" [4] (shared with James Cronin) | |
13 | Steven Weinberg | 1979 | Ph.D. (1957) [38] | "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current" [39] (shared with Sheldon Lee Glashow and Abdus Salam) | |
12 | Arno Allan Penzias | 1978 | Visiting lecturer with rank of professor [40] | "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation" [41] (shared with Pyotr Kapitsa and Robert Woodrow Wilson) | |
11 | Philip Warren Anderson | 1977 | Joseph Henry Professor of Physics [42] | "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems" [43] (shared with Nevill Francis Mott and John Hasbrouck Van Vleck) | |
10 | John van Vleck | 1977 | Visiting Professor, Department of Physics (1937), taught a course for a semester [44] [45] [46] | "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems." [47] (shared with Nevill Francis Mott and Philip Warren Anderson) | |
9 | John Bardeen * | 1972 | Ph.D.(1936) [48] (*Another Physics prize in 1956) | "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory" [49] (shared with Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer) | |
8 | Richard Feynman | 1965 | Ph.D. (1942) [50] | "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles" [51] (shared with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger) | |
7 | Eugene Wigner | 1963 | Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics; Half-time Research Professor (1931-1934) and Visiting Professor (1934-1936) [52] | "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles" [53] (shared with Maria Goeppert Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen) | |
6 | Robert Hofstadter | 1961 | M.A., Ph.D. (1938); Assistant Professor; Postdoctoral Researcher [54] | "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons" [55] (shared with Rudolf Mössbauer) | |
John Bardeen * | 1956 | Ph.D. (1936) [48] (*Another Physics prize in 1972) | "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect" [56] (shared with William Shockley and Walter Houser Brattain) | ||
5 | William Shockley | 1956 | Lecturer (1946) [57] | "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect." [58] (shared with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain) | |
4 | Wolfgang Pauli | 1945 | Professor [59] | "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle." [60] | |
3 | Clinton Davisson | 1937 | Ph.D (1911) [61] | "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals" [62] (shared with George Paget Thomson) | |
2 | Owen Richardson | 1928 | Professor [63] | "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him." [64] | |
1 | Arthur Compton | 1927 | M.A., Ph.D (1916) [65] | "for his discovery of the effect named after him" [66] (shared with Charles Thomson Rees Wilson) |
No. | Laureate | Year | Image | Affiliation | Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
10 | David MacMillan | 2021 | James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry [67] | "for for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis" [68] (shared with Benjamin List) | |
9 | Frances Arnold | 2018 | Class of 1979 (B.S) [69] | "for the directed evolution of enzymes" [70] (shared with George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter) | |
8 | Tomas Lindahl | 2015 | Postdoctoral researcher [71] | "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" [72] (shared with Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar) | |
7 | Osamu Shimomura | 2008 | Research associate in biology [73] | "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" [74] (shared with Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien) | |
6 | John B. Fenn | 2002 | Professor [75] | "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules." [76] (shared with Koichi Tanaka and Kurt Wüthrich) | |
5 | Richard Smalley | 1996 | Ph.D. (1974) [77] | "for their discovery of fullerenes" [78] (shared with Robert Curl and Harold Kroto) | |
4 | F. Sherwood Rowland | 1995 | Instructor, Department of Chemistry (1952-1956) [79] | "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone." [80] (shared with Mario J. Molina and Paul J. Crutzen) | |
3 | John Polanyi | 1986 | Research Associate (1954-1956) [81] | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." [82] (shared with Yuan T. Lee and Dudley R. Herschbach) | |
2 | Edwin McMillan | 1951 | Ph.D. (1933) [83] | "for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements" [84] (shared with Glenn T. Seaborg) | |
1 | Arne Tiselius | 1948 | Rockefeller Fellow at H.S. Taylor's laboratory (1936) [85] | "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins." [86] |
No. | Laureate | Year | Image | Affiliation | Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
4 | James Rothman | 2013 | Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology [87] | "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells" [88] (shared with Randy Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof) | |
3 | Eric F. Wieschaus | 1995 | Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology [89] | "for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development" [90] (shared with Edward B. Lewis and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard) | |
2 | Salvador Luria | 1969 | Guggenheim Fellow (1943) [91] [92] | "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses." [93] (shared with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey) | |
1 | Edward C. Kendall | 1950 | Visiting Professor of Chemistry (1951-?) [94] [95] | "for their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects." [96] (shared with Philip Showalter Hench and Tadeusz Reichstein) |
No. | Laureate | Year | Image | Affiliation | Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
23 | David Card | 2021 | Ph.D. (1983); Professor of Economics (1983–1997) [97] | "for his empirical contributions to labor economics." [98] (shared with Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens) | |
22 | Joshua Angrist | 2021 | Ph.D. (1989) [97] | "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships." [99] (shared with David Card and Guido Imbens) | |
21 | Esther Duflo | 2019 | Visitor (2001–2002) [100] | "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." [101] (shared with Michael Kremer and Abhijit Banerjee) | |
20 | Abhijit Banerjee | 2019 | Assistant Professor (1988–1992) [102] | "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." [103] (shared with Michael Kremer and Esther Duflo) | |
19 | Oliver Hart | 2016 | Ph.D. (1974) [104] | "for their contributions to contract theory" [105] (shared with Bengt R. Holmström) | |
18 | Angus Deaton | 2015 | Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs [106] | "for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare" [107] | |
17 | Jean Tirole | 2014 | Visiting Scholar (Spring 2002) [108] | "for his analysis of market power and regulation." [109] | |
16 | Lloyd Shapley | 2012 | Ph.D. (1953); Fine Instructor (1952–1954) [110] | "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design" [111] (shared with Alvin E. Roth) | |
15 | Christopher Sims | 2011 | Harold B. Helms Professor of Economics and Banking [112] | "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy" [7] (shared with Thomas Sargent) | |
14 | Thomas Sargent | 2011 | Visiting professor of economics (Fall 2011, 2010), taught several courses [113] [114] | "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy" [7] (shared with Christopher Sims) | |
13 | Chris Pissarides | 2010 | Visitor, Industrial Relations Section (1984) [115] | "for their analysis of markets with search frictions." [116] (shared with Peter Diamond and Dale T. Mortensen) | |
12 | Paul Krugman | 2008 | Professor of Economics and International Affairs [117] | "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity." [118] | |
11 | Eric Maskin | 2007 | Visiting lecturer with the rank of professor of economics (2000–2012) [119] | "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory." [120] (shared with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson) | |
10 | Robert Aumann | 2005 | Research Associate (1960–1961) [121] | "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." [122] (shared with Thomas Schelling) | |
9 | Daniel Kahneman | 2002 | Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of public affairs [123] | "for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty." [124] (shared with Vernon L. Smith) | |
8 | Michael Spence | 2001 | Class of 1966 (B.A) [125] | "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information." [126] (shared with George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz) | |
7 | Joseph Stiglitz | 2001 | Professor of Economics (1979-1988) [127] | "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information." [128] (shared with George Akerlof and Michael Spence) | |
6 | James Heckman | 2000 | M.A. (1968), Ph.D. (1971) [129] | "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples." [130] (shared with Daniel McFadden) | |
5 | John Forbes Nash | 1994 | Ph.D. (1950); Senior research mathematician [131] | "for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games." [132] (shared with John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten) | |
4 | Gary Becker | 1992 | Class of 1951 (B.A) [133] | "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including non-market behaviour." [134] | |
3 | Lawrence Klein | 1980 | Visiting Professor (Spring 1966) [135] | "for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies." [136] | |
2 | W. Arthur Lewis | 1979 | James Madison Professor of Political Economy [137] | "for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries." [138] (shared with Theodore Schultz) | |
1 | Tjalling Koopmans | 1975 | Research Associate (1940–1941) [139] | "for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of resources." [140] (shared with Leonid Kantorovich) |
No. | Laureate | Year | Image | Affiliation | Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
5 | Mario Vargas Llosa | 2010 | Visiting professor of Latin American Studies [141] | "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat" [142] | |
4 | Kenzaburō Ōe | 1994 | Visiting Lecturer (1997) [143] | "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." [144] | |
3 | Toni Morrison | 1993 | Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities [145] | "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" [146] | |
2 | Saul Bellow | 1976 | Creative Writing Fellow (1952-1953) [147] [148] | "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work." [149] | |
1 | Eugene O'Neill | 1936 | Class of 1910 [150] | "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy" [151] |
No. | Laureate | Year | Image | Affiliation | Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | Maria Ressa | 2021 | Class of 1986 [152] | Founder of Rappler, former CNN reporter | |
1 | Woodrow Wilson | 1919 | Class of 1879; member of the faculty and president emeritus of the university [153] | 28th President of the United States; founder of the League of Nations. [3] |
The Nobel Prizes are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind." Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.
The Right Livelihood Award is an international award to "honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today." The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, and is presented annually in early December. An international jury, invited by the five regular Right Livelihood Award board members, decides the awards in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, and peace. The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is €200,000. Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money.
Daniel Little McFadden is an American econometrician who shared the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Heckman. McFadden's share of the prize was "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice". He is the Presidential Professor of Health Economics at the University of Southern California and Professor of the Graduate School at University of California, Berkeley.
The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles. Milton Friedman and George Stigler are considered the leading scholars of the Chicago school.
The MIT Department of Economics is a department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
CIFAR is a Canadian-based global research organization that brings together teams of top researchers from around the world to address important and complex questions. It was founded in 1982 and is supported by individuals, foundations and corporations, as well as funding from the Government of Canada and the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.
Bengt Robert Holmström is a Finnish economist who is currently Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together with Oliver Hart, he received the Central Bank of Sweden Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is an economics award administered by the Nobel Foundation.
The Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is the prize committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and fills the same role as the Nobel Committees do for the Nobel Prizes. This means that the Committee is responsible for proposing laureates for the Prize. The Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is appointed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It usually consists of Swedish professors of economics or related subjects who are members of the Academy, although the Academy in principle could appoint anyone to the Committee. Two of the members of the founding committee as well as later members of the committee had also been associated with the Mont Pelerin Society.
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