/A-Visual-History-of-Nobel-Prize-Winners

A Visual History of Nobel Prize Winners

Primary LanguageJupyter Notebook

1. The most Nobel of Prizes

The Nobel Prize is perhaps the world's most well known scientific award. Except for the honor, prestige and substantial prize money the recipient also gets a gold medal showing Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896) who established the prize. Every year it's given to scientists and scholars in the categories chemistry, literature, physics, physiology or medicine, economics, and peace. The first Nobel Prize was handed out in 1901, and at that time the Prize was very Eurocentric and male-focused, but nowadays it's not biased in any way whatsoever. Surely. Right?

Well, we're going to find out! The Nobel Foundation has made a dataset available of all prize winners from the start of the prize, in 1901, to 2016. Let's load it in and take a look.

# Loading in required libraries
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import numpy as np


# Reading in the Nobel Prize data
nobel = pd.read_csv('datasets/nobel.csv')

# Taking a look at the first several winners
nobel.head(n=10)
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year category prize motivation prize_share laureate_id laureate_type full_name birth_date birth_city birth_country sex organization_name organization_city organization_country death_date death_city death_country
0 1901 Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1901 "in recognition of the extraordinary services ... 1/1 160 Individual Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff 1852-08-30 Rotterdam Netherlands Male Berlin University Berlin Germany 1911-03-01 Berlin Germany
1 1901 Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature 1901 "in special recognition of his poetic composit... 1/1 569 Individual Sully Prudhomme 1839-03-16 Paris France Male NaN NaN NaN 1907-09-07 Châtenay France
2 1901 Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901 "for his work on serum therapy, especially its... 1/1 293 Individual Emil Adolf von Behring 1854-03-15 Hansdorf (Lawice) Prussia (Poland) Male Marburg University Marburg Germany 1917-03-31 Marburg Germany
3 1901 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1901 NaN 1/2 462 Individual Jean Henry Dunant 1828-05-08 Geneva Switzerland Male NaN NaN NaN 1910-10-30 Heiden Switzerland
4 1901 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1901 NaN 1/2 463 Individual Frédéric Passy 1822-05-20 Paris France Male NaN NaN NaN 1912-06-12 Paris France
5 1901 Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 "in recognition of the extraordinary services ... 1/1 1 Individual Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen 1845-03-27 Lennep (Remscheid) Prussia (Germany) Male Munich University Munich Germany 1923-02-10 Munich Germany
6 1902 Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1902 "in recognition of the extraordinary services ... 1/1 161 Individual Hermann Emil Fischer 1852-10-09 Euskirchen Prussia (Germany) Male Berlin University Berlin Germany 1919-07-15 Berlin Germany
7 1902 Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature 1902 "the greatest living master of the art of hist... 1/1 571 Individual Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen 1817-11-30 Garding Schleswig (Germany) Male NaN NaN NaN 1903-11-01 Charlottenburg Germany
8 1902 Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1902 "for his work on malaria, by which he has show... 1/1 294 Individual Ronald Ross 1857-05-13 Almora India Male University College Liverpool United Kingdom 1932-09-16 Putney Heath United Kingdom
9 1902 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1902 NaN 1/2 464 Individual Élie Ducommun 1833-02-19 Geneva Switzerland Male NaN NaN NaN 1906-12-07 Bern Switzerland
## 2. So, who gets the Nobel Prize?

Just looking at the first couple of prize winners, or Nobel laureates as they are also called, we already see a celebrity: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the guy who discovered X-rays. And actually, we see that all of the winners in 1901 were guys that came from Europe. But that was back in 1901, looking at all winners in the dataset, from 1901 to 2016, which sex and which country is the most commonly represented?

(For country, we will use the birth_country of the winner, as the organization_country is NaN for all shared Nobel Prizes.)

# Display the number of (possibly shared) Nobel Prizes handed
# out between 1901 and 2016
display(len(nobel))

# Display the number of prizes won by male and female recipients.
display(nobel['sex'].value_counts())

# Display the number of prizes won by the top 10 nationalities.
nobel['birth_country'].value_counts().head(n=10)
911



Male      836
Female     49
Name: sex, dtype: int64





United States of America    259
United Kingdom               85
Germany                      61
France                       51
Sweden                       29
Japan                        24
Netherlands                  18
Canada                       18
Italy                        17
Russia                       17
Name: birth_country, dtype: int64

3. USA dominance

Not so surprising perhaps: the most common Nobel laureate between 1901 and 2016 was a man born in the United States of America. But in 1901 all the winners were European. When did the USA start to dominate the Nobel Prize charts?

# Calculating the proportion of USA born winners per decade
nobel['usa_born_winner'] = nobel['birth_country'] == "United States of America"
nobel['decade'] = np.floor(nobel['year'] / 10).astype('int64') * 10
prop_usa_winners = nobel.groupby('decade', as_index=False)['usa_born_winner'].mean()

# Display the proportions of USA born winners per decade
prop_usa_winners
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decade usa_born_winner
0 1900 0.017544
1 1910 0.075000
2 1920 0.074074
3 1930 0.250000
4 1940 0.302326
5 1950 0.291667
6 1960 0.265823
7 1970 0.317308
8 1980 0.319588
9 1990 0.403846
10 2000 0.422764
11 2010 0.292683
## 4. USA dominance, visualized

A table is OK, but to see when the USA started to dominate the Nobel charts we need a plot!

# Setting the plotting theme
sns.set()
# and setting the size of all plots.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = [11, 7]

# Plotting USA born winners 
ax = sns.lineplot(data=prop_usa_winners, x='decade', y='usa_born_winner')

# Adding %-formatting to the y-axis
from matplotlib.ticker import PercentFormatter
ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(PercentFormatter(1))

png

5. What is the gender of a typical Nobel Prize winner?

So the USA became the dominating winner of the Nobel Prize first in the 1930s and had kept the leading position ever since. But one group that was in the lead from the start, and never seems to let go, are men. Maybe it shouldn't come as a shock that there is some imbalance between how many male and female prize winners there are, but how significant is this imbalance? And is it better or worse within specific prize categories like physics, medicine, literature, etc.?

# Calculating the proportion of female laureates per decade
nobel['female_winner'] = nobel['sex'] == 'Female'
prop_female_winners = nobel.groupby(['decade','category'] , as_index=False)['female_winner'].mean()

ax = sns.lineplot(data=prop_female_winners, x='decade', y='female_winner', hue='category')

# Adding %-formatting to the y-axis
from matplotlib.ticker import PercentFormatter
ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(PercentFormatter(1))

png

6. The first woman to win the Nobel Prize

The plot above is a bit messy as the lines are overplotting. But it does show some interesting trends and patterns. Overall the imbalance is pretty large with physics, economics, and chemistry having the largest imbalance. Medicine has a somewhat positive trend, and since the 1990s the literature prize is also now more balanced. The big outlier is the peace prize during the 2010s, but keep in mind that this just covers the years 2010 to 2016.

Given this imbalance, who was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize? And in what category?

# Picking out the first woman to win a Nobel Prize
nobel[nobel['female_winner']].nsmallest(1, 'year')
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year category prize motivation prize_share laureate_id laureate_type full_name birth_date birth_city ... sex organization_name organization_city organization_country death_date death_city death_country usa_born_winner decade female_winner
19 1903 Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 "in recognition of the extraordinary services ... 1/4 6 Individual Marie Curie, née Sklodowska 1867-11-07 Warsaw ... Female NaN NaN NaN 1934-07-04 Sallanches France False 1900 True

1 rows × 21 columns

7. Repeat laureates

For most scientists/writers/activists a Nobel Prize would be the crowning achievement of a long career. But for some people, one is just not enough, and few have gotten it more than once. Who are these lucky few? (Having won no Nobel Prize myself, I'll assume it's just about luck.)

# Selecting the laureates that have received 2 or more prizes.
nobel.groupby('full_name').filter(lambda group: len(group) > 1)
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year category prize motivation prize_share laureate_id laureate_type full_name birth_date birth_city ... sex organization_name organization_city organization_country death_date death_city death_country usa_born_winner decade female_winner
19 1903 Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 "in recognition of the extraordinary services ... 1/4 6 Individual Marie Curie, née Sklodowska 1867-11-07 Warsaw ... Female NaN NaN NaN 1934-07-04 Sallanches France False 1900 True
62 1911 Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911 "in recognition of her services to the advance... 1/1 6 Individual Marie Curie, née Sklodowska 1867-11-07 Warsaw ... Female Sorbonne University Paris France 1934-07-04 Sallanches France False 1910 True
89 1917 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1917 NaN 1/1 482 Organization Comité international de la Croix Rouge (Intern... NaN NaN ... NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN False 1910 False
215 1944 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1944 NaN 1/1 482 Organization Comité international de la Croix Rouge (Intern... NaN NaN ... NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN False 1940 False
278 1954 Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954 "for his research into the nature of the chemi... 1/1 217 Individual Linus Carl Pauling 1901-02-28 Portland, OR ... Male California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Pasadena, CA United States of America 1994-08-19 Big Sur, CA United States of America True 1950 False
283 1954 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1954 NaN 1/1 515 Organization Office of the United Nations High Commissioner... NaN NaN ... NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN False 1950 False
298 1956 Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 1956 "for their researches on semiconductors and th... 1/3 66 Individual John Bardeen 1908-05-23 Madison, WI ... Male University of Illinois Urbana, IL United States of America 1991-01-30 Boston, MA United States of America True 1950 False
306 1958 Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1958 "for his work on the structure of proteins, es... 1/1 222 Individual Frederick Sanger 1918-08-13 Rendcombe ... Male University of Cambridge Cambridge United Kingdom 2013-11-19 Cambridge United Kingdom False 1950 False
340 1962 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1962 NaN 1/1 217 Individual Linus Carl Pauling 1901-02-28 Portland, OR ... Male California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Pasadena, CA United States of America 1994-08-19 Big Sur, CA United States of America True 1960 False
348 1963 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1963 NaN 1/2 482 Organization Comité international de la Croix Rouge (Intern... NaN NaN ... NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN False 1960 False
424 1972 Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 1972 "for their jointly developed theory of superco... 1/3 66 Individual John Bardeen 1908-05-23 Madison, WI ... Male University of Illinois Urbana, IL United States of America 1991-01-30 Boston, MA United States of America True 1970 False
505 1980 Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1980 "for their contributions concerning the determ... 1/4 222 Individual Frederick Sanger 1918-08-13 Rendcombe ... Male MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge United Kingdom 2013-11-19 Cambridge United Kingdom False 1980 False
523 1981 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 1981 NaN 1/1 515 Organization Office of the United Nations High Commissioner... NaN NaN ... NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN False 1980 False

13 rows × 21 columns

8. How old are you when you get the prize?

The list of repeat winners contains some illustrious names! We again meet Marie Curie, who got the prize in physics for discovering radiation and in chemistry for isolating radium and polonium. John Bardeen got it twice in physics for transistors and superconductivity, Frederick Sanger got it twice in chemistry, and Linus Carl Pauling got it first in chemistry and later in peace for his work in promoting nuclear disarmament. We also learn that organizations also get the prize as both the Red Cross and the UNHCR have gotten it twice.

But how old are you generally when you get the prize?

# Converting birth_date from String to datetime
nobel['birth_date'] = pd.to_datetime(nobel['birth_date'])

# Calculating the age of Nobel Prize winners
nobel['age'] = nobel['year'] - nobel['birth_date'].dt.year

# Plotting the age of Nobel Prize winners
sns.lmplot(data=nobel, x='year', y='age', lowess=True, aspect=2, line_kws={'color' : 'black'})
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7fb0e325e438>

png

9. Age differences between prize categories

The plot above shows us a lot! We see that people use to be around 55 when they received the price, but nowadays the average is closer to 65. But there is a large spread in the laureates' ages, and while most are 50+, some are very young.

We also see that the density of points is much high nowadays than in the early 1900s -- nowadays many more of the prizes are shared, and so there are many more winners. We also see that there was a disruption in awarded prizes around the Second World War (1939 - 1945).

Let's look at age trends within different prize categories.

# Same plot as above, but separate plots for each type of Nobel Prize
sns.lmplot(data=nobel, x='year', y='age', row='category', lowess=True, aspect=2, line_kws={'color' : 'black'})
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7fb0e3384470>

png

10. Oldest and youngest winners

More plots with lots of exciting stuff going on! We see that both winners of the chemistry, medicine, and physics prize have gotten older over time. The trend is strongest for physics: the average age used to be below 50, and now it's almost 70. Literature and economics are more stable. We also see that economics is a newer category. But peace shows an opposite trend where winners are getting younger!

In the peace category we also a winner around 2010 that seems exceptionally young. This begs the questions, who are the oldest and youngest people ever to have won a Nobel Prize?

# The oldest winner of a Nobel Prize as of 2016
display(nobel.nlargest(1,'age'))

# The youngest winner of a Nobel Prize as of 2016
nobel.nsmallest(1,'age')
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year category prize motivation prize_share laureate_id laureate_type full_name birth_date birth_city ... organization_name organization_city organization_country death_date death_city death_country usa_born_winner decade female_winner age
793 2007 Economics The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Scienc... "for having laid the foundations of mechanism ... 1/3 820 Individual Leonid Hurwicz 1917-08-21 Moscow ... University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN United States of America 2008-06-24 Minneapolis, MN United States of America False 2000 False 90.0

1 rows × 22 columns

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year category prize motivation prize_share laureate_id laureate_type full_name birth_date birth_city ... organization_name organization_city organization_country death_date death_city death_country usa_born_winner decade female_winner age
885 2014 Peace The Nobel Peace Prize 2014 "for their struggle against the suppression of... 1/2 914 Individual Malala Yousafzai 1997-07-12 Mingora ... NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN False 2010 True 17.0

1 rows × 22 columns

11. You get a prize!

Hey! You get a prize for making it to the very end of this notebook! It might not be a Nobel Prize, but I made it myself in paint so it should count for something. But don't despair, Leonid Hurwicz was 90 years old when he got his prize, so it might not be too late for you. Who knows.

Before you leave, what was again the name of the youngest winner ever who in 2014 got the prize for "[her] struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education"?

# The name of the youngest winner of the Nobel Prize as of 2016
youngest_winner = 'Malala'