Visual stories
See the scale
Shares this small and odds this long are hard to feel as numbers. These pictures turn them into things you can see: squares, a stadium, coins, a calendar and crowds. Each one says what its shapes mean and what to take away, and gives the exact figures and how we worked them out.
The one number to remember
61×
223 Jewish laureates: about 61 times the 3.7 that chance predicts.
If each Nobel Prize had gone to someone picked at random from everyone alive that year, you would expect about 3.7 Jewish laureates. There have been 223. Other ratios you may see elsewhere differ because they compare with today’s population, or with people who are not Jewish only; the pictures below use plain counts and shares instead.
- Blue: Jewish Nobel laureates
- Black: Jewish people
- Sand: everyone else
Chapter 2 · How long the odds
Could it be chance?
Suppose every prize had gone to someone picked at random from everyone alive that year. First, how many Jewish laureates chance predicts; then, how unlikely the real number would be.
The chance of this many Jewish laureates, if prizes followed population
1 in 10 to the power 315
About as likely as a fair coin landing heads 1,047 times in a row.
What chance predicts vs what happened
Chance predicts fewer than 4. The real number is 223.
Imagine every Nobel Prize went to a person picked at random from everyone alive that year. The outlined medals show how many of those winners would be Jewish: fewer than 4. Each filled medal is a real Jewish laureate: 223.
3.7
Expected by chance
the last one is 7/10 of a medal
223
What actually happened
61×the expected number
Every medal is the same size. Filled medals come in blocks of ten.
For every Jewish laureate chance predicts, there have been about 61.
How we computed this
For every prize given to a person, we took the Jewish share of the world's population in the year it was awarded and added those shares together. That total is the number of Jewish laureates you would expect if each prize were a random pick from everyone alive. Prizes to organizations are not counted.
How long chance would need
Chance would need about 7,600 years. It took 125.
Each small square is one year of Nobel Prizes, starting in 1901, with one century per row. The blue squares are the 125 years it actually took to reach 223 Jewish laureates. Each dot is one Jewish laureate arriving at the pace chance predicts: about one every 34 years.
125 years
what it actually took to reach 223
7,600 years
what chance would need
- 1901 to 2025: the real record
- The rest of the years chance would need
- A Jewish laureate at chance’s pace, about one every 34 years
The same 7,600 years, counted back from today
The blue sliver at the right end is the 125 years of real prizes. Everything to its left is the time chance would still need.
The same comparison as a table
| Jewish laureate | In reality | At chance’s pace |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 1905 | 1935 |
| 50th | 1965 | 3601 |
| 100th | 1981 | 5301 |
| 150th | 2000 | 7001 |
| 200th | 2017 | 8701 |
| 223rd | 2025 | 9483 |
At chance’s pace the count would not reach 223 until about the year 9483. Counted backward instead, 7,600 years before today is about 5600 BCE, before writing was invented.
How we computed this
Chance’s figure is the one in the picture above: for every prize to a person, the Jewish share of the world's population in its year, added together (3.68). 125 years divided by that gives one Jewish laureate every 34.0 years at chance’s pace; the dot for the k-th one sits in the year that pace first reaches k. The grid is 125 years times 61 (the real number divided by the expected one), rounded to the nearest hundred: 7,600 squares, 1901 to 9500. It assumes prizes keep coming at the same average pace as since 1901. Dates on the ruler: the earliest known writing, clay tablets from Uruk in Mesopotamia, about 3200 BCE (The Met, Britannica); the Great Pyramid of Giza, built for Khufu about 2560 BCE (World History Encyclopedia).
The odds, written out
A 1 followed by 315 zeros
Each row prints a set of odds in full, one digit at a time, all at the same size. A longer row means longer odds: every extra digit makes them ten times longer.
Winning the Powerball jackpot with one play
1 in 292,201,338
1 in292201338
Picking one marked atom from the observable universe
1 in 10 to the power 80, a 1 and 80 zeros
1 in100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
The Nobel record, if prizes followed population
1 in about 10 to the power 315, a 1 and 315 zeros
1 in1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Same type size in every row: each extra digit makes the odds ten times longer.
A lottery jackpot fits on one short line. The odds against the Nobel record, if prizes had simply followed population, fill the tile: about as unlikely as picking one marked atom out of the whole universe four times in a row.
How we computed this
Treat each of the 995 individual awards as an independent draw in which a Jewish laureate is as likely as the Jewish share of the world population at the time of the prize (3.7 expected in all). The chance of 223 or more is then about 1 in 10 to the power 315 (a binomial tail, rounded down to a whole power of ten). Finding one marked atom among about 10 to the power 80 is 1 in 10 to the power 80; doing it four times in a row is 1 in 10 to the power 320, close to the Nobel figure (315.3 ÷ 80 = 3.94 runs).
A coin that never misses
Heads, 1,047 times in a row
Every gold coin is one flip of a fair coin that came up heads, packed in crates of 100. Flagged coins mark where the streak becomes as unlikely as a familiar long shot; the line under each crate gives the odds of the streak so far.
= one toss of a fair coin, landing heads. Each crate holds 100. Every extra head halves the odds.
| Long shot | Odds | Heads in a row |
|---|---|---|
| a Powerball jackpot, one ticket | 1 in 292,201,338 | 28 |
| picking one named person from everyone alive | 1 in 8.1 billion | 33 |
| a perfect 63-game NCAA bracket, by guessing | 1 in 2 to the power 63 | 63 |
| one marked atom in a human body | 1 in 7 times 10 to the power 27 | 92 |
| one marked atom in the whole Earth | 1 in 1.3 times 10 to the power 50 | 166 |
| one marked atom in the observable universe | 1 in 10 to the power 80 | 266 |
| the Nobel record, if prizes followed population | 1 in about 10 to the power 315 | 1,047 |
28 heads in a row already match a lottery jackpot. The universe runs out at coin 266. The Nobel record keeps going for another 781 coins.
How we computed this
Treat each of the 995 individual awards as an independent draw in which a Jewish laureate is as likely as the Jewish share of the world population at the time of the prize (3.7 expected in all). The chance of 223 or more is then about 1 in 10 to the power 315 (a binomial tail, rounded down to a whole power of ten). A run of k heads has probability 1 in 2k, so k = 315.3 ÷ log₁₀2 ≈ 1,047 (using the unrounded exponent). A long shot of 1 in N lands on coin log₂N, rounded. Winning the Powerball jackpot with one play (official prize chart): 1 in 292,201,338, log₂N = 28.12, so coin 28. One named person out of everyone alive (8,140,897,523, the site’s world population figure): 1 in 8.1 billion, log₂N = 32.92, so coin 33. A perfect 63-game bracket, every game a coin flip (NCAA.com): 1 in 263, log₂N = 63.00, so coin 63. One atom in a 70 kg adult (Jefferson Lab Science Education): 1 in 7 × 10 to the power 27, log₂N = 92.49, so coin 92. One atom in the Earth, its mass divided by its average atomic mass (Science Notes): 1 in 1.3 × 10 to the power 50, log₂N = 166.47, so coin 166. One atom in the observable universe: 1 in 10 to the power 80, log₂N = 265.75, so coin 266. The last coin is 1,047, so the record runs 1,047 − 266 = 781 coins past the universe.
Chapter 3 · Across time
Not one lucky streak
The gap is not the work of one generation. It runs through the whole history of the prize, from 1901 to 2025: in a single year drawn to scale, in almost every prize year, and in every decade.
Prize years with at least one Jewish laureate
89of 122
Chance predicts about 4 such years.
One year
In humanity’s year, the Jewish share is over by 4:56 PM on New Year’s Day. In the Nobel year, it lasts 82 days.
Each square is one day of a year, filled from midnight on January 1. Black fills the Jewish share of humanity; blue fills the Jewish share of Nobel laureates.
If all of humanity were one year
17 hours
Jewish people (0.19% of humanity in 2024) would be done by 4:56 PM.
If all Nobel laureates were one year
82 days
Jewish laureates (22.5% of all laureates) would run from New Year’s Day to March 24.
Jewish people fill about 17 hours of humanity’s calendar; Jewish laureates fill almost 3 months of the Nobel calendar.
How we computed this
Share × 365 days, filled from midnight on January 1. The population share is the core Jewish population (people who identify as Jewish and no other religion, not the larger “enlarged” count) divided by world population in 2024, the same figure the rest of this page uses. The averaged marker uses the Jewish share of the world in the year of each of the 995 individual prizes. The laureate share counts people, not prizes. Each calendar cell is one day at true size.
Every prize year
Most Nobel years have a Jewish laureate. Chance says it should be rare.
Each square is one year, from 1901 to 2025, with one row per decade. A blue square means at least one Jewish person won a Nobel Prize that year. A sand square means none did. Striped squares are years when no prizes were given at all.
89 of 122
prize years had a Jewish laureate
4
what chance predicts
- A Jewish laureate won
- No Jewish laureate
- No prizes given (1940 to 1942)
- Unbroken run, 1958 to 1973
Before 1958
25 of 54
prize years
1958 to 2025
64 of 68
prize years
Unbroken run: 1958 to 1973 (16 years)
We split at 1958 because that is when the longest unbroken run began.
If prizes followed population, a year with a Jewish laureate would come around about once every 34 years. In reality it happens about 7 years in 10.
How we computed this
A year is blue if anyone named a laureate that year, in any of the six categories, is on our list of Jewish laureates. A prize year is a year in which at least one person received a prize. For the chance estimate we treated each prize in a year as a random pick from everyone alive that year, worked out the chance that at least one pick was Jewish, and added those chances over all 122 prize years. The row totals on the right count only prize years.
Decade by decade
About 1 in 9 before the war, about 1 in 4 since the 1960s
Each grid is one decade. Imagine that decade’s laureates shrunk to a group of exactly 100: the blue squares are how many of those 100 were Jewish. The grids are grouped into three periods, with a total for each. The share did not climb in a straight line; it moves up and down from decade to decade, so compare the period totals.
The outlined corner square is 1 of every 100. If prizes followed population, the blue would not fill even that one square in any decade: the Jewish share of the world was never above 0.75%.
1900s–1930s
Before the Second World War
Together: 11%, about 1 in 9 (22 of 203)
11%
1900s
6 of 56
18%
1910s
7 of 38
11%
1920s
6 of 54
5%
1930s
3 of 55
1940s–1950s
War, and the years after the flight of Jewish scientists from Nazi-ruled Europe
Together: 18%, about 1 in 6 (20 of 111)
20%
1940s
8 of 40
17%
1950s
12 of 71
1960s–2020s so far
Every decade since
Together: 27%, about 1 in 4 (181 of 681)
25%
1960s
19 of 75
31%
1970s
32 of 103
30%
1980s
28 of 94
28%
1990s
28 of 101
26%
2000s
31 of 119
22%
2010s
26 of 117
24%
2020s so far
17 of 72
Before 1940, 22 of 203 laureates were Jewish (11%). Since 1960 it is 181 of 681 (27%), and no decade since has dropped below 22%. If prizes followed population, no grid would have even one full blue square; even in the lowest decade, the 1930s, more than 5 of every 100 laureates were Jewish.
How we computed this
For each decade: prizes to Jewish laureates ÷ all prizes to individual people, times 100 squares; the last square is filled left to right to its exact fraction. Period totals add up the decades’ prizes. A person with two prizes counts in each prize’s decade. Organizations are not counted. The 2020s run through 2025. The outlined square is the Jewish share of the world at mid-decade, rounded up to a whole square. The period boundaries are our editorial choice.
Chapter 4 · Prizes and people
Every field, and who won
Every field the prize covers, the women laureates, and the laureates who had to flee their country.
Economics laureates who are Jewish
40%
40 of 99, the highest share of any field. All 6 fields have Jewish laureates; the lowest share is Peace, at 8%.
Every laureate, every field
223 Jewish laureates, 1905 to 2025, in every field the prize covers
Each dot is one Nobel laureate, placed at the year of the prize, in one row per prize. Blue dots are Jewish laureates; sand dots are everyone else.
Blue appears in every row, from 40% of Economics laureates to 8% of Peace laureates.
How we computed this
One dot per prize to an individual (organizations are left out), at the year of the prize. Dots in a row are packed so none overlap; vertical position within a row carries no meaning. Row shares count Jewish laureates over all individual prizes in that category.
The women laureates
Chance predicts less than one Jewish woman laureate. There have been 12.
Imagine each of the 67 women who have won a Nobel Prize had been picked at random from everyone alive when she won. Even in the year when Jewish people made up the largest share of the world, you would expect fewer than one Jewish woman among them. The blue dots are the 12 Jewish women who actually won.
0.5
The most chance could predict
half of one woman
12 of 67
women laureates are Jewish
When the 12 Jewish women won
One dot per woman. Dots stack when winners fall in the same five years.
- Gerty Cori 1947, Medicine
- Nelly Sachs 1966, Literature
- Rosalyn Yalow 1977, Medicine
- Rita Levi-Montalcini 1986, Medicine
- Gertrude B. Elion 1988, Medicine
- Nadine Gordimer 1991, Literature
- Elfriede Jelinek 2004, Literature
- Ada E. Yonath 2009, Chemistry
- Elinor Ostrom 2009, Economics
- Andrea Ghez 2020, Physics
- Louise Glück 2020, Literature
- Claudia Goldin 2023, Economics
More than 1 in 6 women laureates is Jewish (12 of 67). That is a little lower than among all laureates, where it is more than 1 in 5, and both are far above what chance predicts.
How we computed this
Women laureates are people recorded as female by the Nobel Foundation; each woman counts once. Our data does not include every woman laureate's award year, so for the chance figure we gave all 67 women the highest Jewish share of the world's population in any year from 1901 to 2025 (0.75%, in 1922). That is the most chance could predict; using each woman's own year would give fewer. The dot plot groups award years in five-year steps.
Refugees
More than 1 in 5 Jewish Nobel laureates were refugees: 50 of 223
Each figure is one of the 223 Jewish laureates. Filled figures were refugees, forced to flee the country they lived in; outlined figures were not.
Of the 223 Jewish laureates, 50 had to flee their country.
How we computed this
A laureate counts as a refugee when their profile records that they had to leave their country because of persecution or war. The 8 names are spaced evenly through the 50 refugee laureates in order of prize year.
Chapter 5 · What it gave
Lives saved
A prize marks the work, not what came of it. Some of that work has kept very many people alive.
Lives saved by work credited to Jewish laureates
42–119million
A conservative range. Even the low end is more people than live in Canada.
Lives saved
More lives saved than Canada has people
Each circle’s area is proportional to a number of people. The solid black disc is the low estimate of lives saved by work credited to Jewish laureates, the hatched ring around it the high estimate, and the sand disc the whole population of Canada.
42–119 million
lives saved, from work credited to Jewish laureates
- 42 million low estimate
- 119 million high estimate
- Canada, its entire population: 40 million
Circle areas are to scale.
Even the low estimate is at least as many people as live in all of Canada.
How we computed this
We sum documented outcomes (vaccines, drugs, diagnostics) credited to Jewish laureates’ direct work. Each outcome’s low and high estimates are multiplied by the share of credit belonging to Jewish laureates, and outcomes shared by several laureates are counted once. The country shown is the largest one whose whole population is no bigger than the low estimate.
Chapter 6 · What was lost
What the Holocaust took
Many of these laureates lived through the murder of Europe’s Jews. This is what it did to the Jewish population, then and since.
Fall in the world’s Jewish population, 1939 to 1945
33%
From 16.5 million to 11.0 million. In 2025 there are still fewer Jews than in 1939.
World Jewish population
There are fewer Jews in the world today than in 1939
Each black dot stands for 100,000 Jewish people. The three blocks show the world’s Jewish population in 1939, just before the Second World War, in 1945, when it ended, and in 2025. Each empty circle is 100,000 people fewer than in 1939.
Between 1939 and 1945 the world’s Jewish population fell by a third. About 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust; even with births in those years, 5.5 million fewer were alive in 1945. Eighty years later, there are still about 700,000 fewer Jews than in 1939.
How we computed this
Core Jewish population estimates (Sergio DellaPergola’s revised series in the American Jewish Year Book; the 2025 figure as published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research), from our population dataset. Each total is rounded to the nearest 100,000 to set its number of dots. Other published estimates for 1939 range from 16.2 million to 16.6 million. Elsewhere on this site, “today” means 2024, the latest year with a matching world-population estimate (15.7 million Jewish people); this tile uses the latest Jewish population estimate, for 2025.
These are people, not ratios.
Every blue mark on this page is a person, with a discovery, a book or a peace behind it, and often a hard road to reach it. Their stories say more than any of these pictures can.