It is one of the weeks most awaited by the scientific community. From this Monday, October 2, the list of 2023 Nobel Prizes will begin to be revealed, starting with the Nobel Prize in Medicine. This will then be followed by the Nobel in Physics on Tuesday October 3, the Nobel in Chemistry on October 4, the Nobel in Literature on October 5, the Nobel in Peace on October 6, and finally, the Nobel in Economics on October 10. The prestigious awards ceremony, for its part, will take place on December 10 in Stockholm.
Although it is rare that the choice of winners fits perfectly with traditional predictions, it is already possible to have an idea of the origin of the future winners. Indeed, only a small minority of countries generally monopolize the rewards.
Starting with the United States: of the 954 people who have received a Nobel Prize during their lifetime, 403 are Americans. This is followed by the United Kingdom, with 138 winners, Germany, with 112 winners, and France, with 73 winners.
A gulf between the United States and its main rivals, therefore. Even if this is even more visible between the largest Western countries and the rest of the world: thus, the first ten most awarded countries alone concentrate almost three quarters of the Nobel laureates.
Two French Nobel Prizes in 2022
In 2022, France was particularly distinguished. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the Frenchman Alain Aspect as well as the American John F. Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger for their work on quantum physics, the 14th French Nobel Prize in Physics in history. .
The writer Annie Ernaux, for her part, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she discovers the roots, the distances and the collective constraints of personal memory”, explained the Nobel jury. She was the sixteenth French writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, but the first French woman to win this prize.