Hey, let's rank the Nobel Prize educators

College Search & Selection
1

<p>While talking about college selection and rankings, some people mentioned about Nobel Prize winners of certain universities (colleges). But others may have argued that Nobel Prize winning professors are not necessary good teachers,blah, blah, blah. What they implied is that the number one purpose of a college is to educate students, the number two purpose then comes to research. Alright, let’s see which schools educated the best scholars - Nobel Prize winners. </p>

<p>Following is the rank of the universities that educated Nobel Prize winners. The total number of Nobel Prize winners who are somehow related to the university is put in parentheses, meaning that we don’t want to argue with the research/education priority issue - I know that’s some people’s favorite topics.</p>

<li>Columbia University - 37 (75 total related)</li>
<li>Harvard University - 36 (63 total related)</li>
<li>University of Chicago - 29 (79 total related)</li>
<li>University of California at Berkeley - 25 (46 total related)</li>
<li>MIT - 23 (49 total related)</li>
<li>Caltech - 17 (26 total related)</li>
<li>Yale University - 16 (27 total related)</li>
<li>Princeton University - 15 (29 total related)</li>
<li>Cornell University - 12 (33 total related)</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins University - 12 (32 total related)</li>
<li>City University of New York - 12 (13 total related)</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin at Madison - 11 (17 total related)</li>
<li>Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - 10 (17 total related)</li>
<li>University of Minnesota - 8 (19 total related)</li>
<li>New York University - 8 (17 total related)</li>
<li>Stanford University - 7 (42 total related)</li>
<li>Case Western Reserve University - 7 (15 total related)</li>
<li>Univ. of Michigan at Ann Arbor - 7 (7 total related)</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania - 5 (17 total related)</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon University - 5 (13 total related)</li>
<li>Swarthmore College - 5 (5 total related)</li>
<li>Washington University in St. Louis - 4 ( 23 total related)</li>
<li>Univ. of California at Los Angeles - 4 (8 total related)</li>
<li>University of Washington - 4 (7 total related)</li>
<li>Rutgers University - 3 (5 total related)</li>
<li>University of Pittsburgh - 3 (4 total related)</li>
<li>Vanderbilt - 2 (6 total related)</li>
<li>Purdue University - 2 (5 total related)</li>
<li>University of Maryland at College Park - 2 (5 total related)</li>
<li>The University of Texas at Austin - 2 ( 4 total related)</li>
<li>Ohio State University - 2 ( 3 total related)</li>
<li>Duke University - 2 (2 total related)</li>
<li>Rice University - 2 (3 total related)</li>
<li>United States Naval Academy - 2 (2 total related)</li>
<li>Georgia Tech - 2 (2 total related)</li>
<li>University of Tennessee -1</li>
<li>University of Kansas - 1</li>
<li>Tufts University - 1</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee - 1</li>
<li>Brown University - 1</li>
<li>Virginia Commonwealth University-1</li>
<li>Brandies University-1</li>
<li>University of California at Riverside -1</li>
<li>University of Vermont -1</li>
<li>Penn State -1</li>
<li>Wesleyan University -1</li>
<li>Michigan Tech -1</li>
<li>University of New Mexico -1</li>
<li>University of California at San Diego -1</li>
<li>Williams College - 1</li>
</ol>

<p>Please be aware that, Rockefeller University ( 17 total related) and UT Southwestern Medical Center (1 total related), are not included since they don’t enroll undergraduate students.</p>

<p>Please be aware that, in top 25 research universities (based on US News and World Report ranking), Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, Emory University, University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, University of Virginia, have educated none of the Nobel Prize winners.</p>

<p>Also, please be aware that, in Liberal Arts Colleges, only Swarthmore College, Wesleyan University, Williams College, have educated Nobel Prize winner(s). Swarthmore College and Wesleyan University not only are the higher institutes that educated the most PhDs per capita in the nation, but also are the few LACs that educated Nobel Prize winner. Salute!</p>

<p>I might have missed some schools and/or made some mistakes, please fell free to correct me. Thanks.</p>

2

<p>Here's a video of this years Nobel Peace Prize Winner speaking at Vanderbilt:</p>

<p><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=0AYSAyu7VHc%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://youtube.com/watch?v=0AYSAyu7VHc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

3

<p>This is excellent! Thanks for putting it together!</p>

4

<p>nobel prize winners are self-learners. that is why they receive nobel prizes: discovering knowledge.</p>

<p>the ranking shows nothing about which college gives the best education.</p>

5

<p>Kguo7,</p>

<p>Please name people (if any) who won Nobel Prize without getting higher education to support your assumption.</p>

6

<p>yea, in graduate school, you learn a lot of the material on your own. knowledge is not transferred to your brain via usb, you know.</p>

7

<p>Biztogo, I have a couple of observations:</p>

<p>1) The numbers for nobel prize winners by institution where they were educated seems correct. However, the total number of Nobel Prize winners affiliated to Michigan is 19, not 7. Columbia is 81, not 75. Harvard is 78, not 63. MIT is 63, not 49. Cal is 56, not 46. Stanford is 50, not 43 and Cornell is 40, not 33. Finally, I am pretty sure Dartmouth educated three Nobel Prize winners. </p>

<p>2) It would be cool if could list the number of Nobel prize winners according to where they completed their undergraduate studies. </p>

<p>For example, I know that at Michigan, 4 (David Politzer, Richard Smalley, Sam Ting and Tom Weller) of the 7 students who went on to win the Nobel Prize were undergrads. The other three where graduate students. Of Stanford's 7, 2 completed their undergraduate studies at Stanford, the remaining 5 were graduate students. Of Cornell's 12, 6 completed their undergraduate studies at Cornell and the other 6 were graduate students at Cornell.</p>

8

<p>Thank you for your corrections. It is a wonderful suggestion to list the the number of Nobel prize winners according to where they completed their undergraduate studies. Why don't we do that?</p>

9

<p>I'd like to point out that most Nobel Prize winners were educated at their undergrads about 3-4 decades ago (or more), or before 1975ish. </p>

<p>That doesn't prove much in terms of debating undergrad quality today - as schools change alot over the decades.</p>

10

<p>UFlorida has educated two:</p>

<p>Marshall Nirenberg (BS, MS)
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Nirenberg%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Nirenberg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Robert H. Grubbs (BS, MS)
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grubbs%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grubbs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I don't know if you can that as 2 'related', but whatever.</p>

11

<p>There are 13 Nobel Prize winners who completed their undergraduate studies at University of Chicago.</p>

<p>Let's do the rest.</p>

12

<p>Jesus Christ thethoughtprocess and kguo7. Nobody is using this to rank colleges, it's just some interesting information. No one is trying to replace the almighty US News.</p>

<p>(My guess as to why you dislike this thread: did your alma maters place low?)</p>

13

<p>I'll edit the list at the end.</p>

14

<p>Thethoughtprocess, most top univeristies today were top universities 50 years ago. I agree, however, that the number of Nobel Prize winners produced by a university isn't the best indicator of quality. As far as I am concerned, this exercise is just for fun, nothing more.</p>

15

<p>There are 17 Nobel Prize winners who completed their undergraduate studies at Columbia University. That's awesome!</p>

16

<p>Among LAC's-Holy Cross has produced 1 winner.</p>

17

<p>Yale 7
Caltech 6</p>

18

<p>Um, I think you're mixing Wesleyan up with Ohio Wesleyan. OWU, to its credit, graduated one Nobel Prize winner, Frank Sherwood Rowland, Class of 1948 a co-winner of the 1995 Nobel in Chemistry. I'm not aware that Wesleyan has any Nobel winners among its graduates, though it was an early adaptor of science instruction at the college level.</p>

19

<p>Well, people do tend to correlate Nobel Prizes with undergrad strength on other threads.</p>

<p>But this is all good.</p>

20

<p>Amherst College has educated four Nobel Prize winnners. Amazingly, Swarthmore and Amherst have had two each this decade.</p>

<p>BTW, I know of at least one from Grinnell: Thomas Cech, current head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He just turned down Harvard's offer to become their new president.</p>