<p>Can anyone tell me what is the school with the most Nobel Prize Winners, either as a student or a professor, and how many does Cornell University have?</p>
<p>harvard, berkeley, stanford and chicago I believe historically have the most (I don't have the numbers). Cornell has half a dozen or so who either have taught there or were grad students there...Roald Hoffman teaches an introductory chemistry course...he won a chemistry prize back in the day.</p>
<p>Cambridge has actually historically been associated with the most Nobel Prize winners.</p>
<p>Cambridge has the most, follwed by UChicago and Columbia, I think.</p>
<p>That sounds about right. However, colleges tend to have a very loose definition of Nobel Prize winners having been "at the university."</p>
<p>Cornell has 32. You can look at wikipedia for more info. I think Cornell is 7th or 8th</p>
<p>I have been trying to get this information for awhile and short of the tedious task of compiling the list manually the best I can come up with are that Cambridge and Harvard have the highest number of alums (grad plus undergrad) who won a Nobel. Professors is tricky as all these schools have elastic definitions of who counts [Do you include profs only at the time of Prize, former profs, visiting profs, postdocs, etc??? My preference is only for profs who were at the Uni at time of Nobel or who moved there after winning the prize.] In terms of Nobels per alum, Caltech is way ahead with > 1 Nobel winner for every 1500 grads (nearly one in a 1000) whether counting undergrad or grad alumni. Most other schools are at best an order of magnitude worse.</p>
<p>Harvard claims 43 faculty members have won Nobels:</p>
<p>I'm not sure how many Harvard students and alums have won, but I'm sure it's a lot.</p>
<p>The important criteria is how many were at the university when they actually did their prize-winning work. The Nobel can be awarded years after a professor left the university where he did his prize-winning work. Where they are when they win the Nobel and where they wind up after winning the Nobel...they are less relevant. The university from which they graduated is pretty relevant, too. In Physics, Cornell and Columbia are in the top four, I believe.</p>
<p>I once had a chance to chat with David Lee who won for Physics in 1996 at Cornell. He just popped into the lab where I have a work-study job and asked what I was working on. No particular reason...he is just a very curious guy and easy to talk to. </p>
<p>There are web sites that have info on Nobel winners.</p>
<p>How many people's dreams is it to win the Nobel Prize?</p>
<p>Here's the best breakdown I could find.</p>
<p>
I</a> don't think it's updated for this year (I know Caltech is missing one in Chemistry at least). </p>
<p>It also counts double if someone was a student and then became a faculty member.</p>
<p>Wikipedia might actually give caltech one too many. It says 31, but on the caltech webite it says they have 30 winners and 31 prizes (I guess someone one twice)</p>
<p>Cambridge University's 80 Winners
University of Chicago's 78 Winners
Columbia's 73 Winners</p>
<p>
It's missing Grubbs from this year and has Anderson and Pauling listed twice.</p>
<p>Huh, weird. Maybe a typo of some sort.</p>
<p>They give "double credit" if a person graduated from the school and then went on to teach there as well. I think they do it for all schools listed. It makes a little sense in terms of having Nobel winning faculty is a different measure of quality than producing Nobel winning students, but I wouldn't do it that way.</p>
<p>Notice the problems with Chicago's count. Someone like Koopmans who left Chicago 20 years before the prize was counted. Ditto for Debreu. Arrow spent even less time at Chicago but I think he got an honorary degree. Caltech doesn't count people like Einstein who spent several years at Caltech before going to Princeton, while Chicago counts Bethe who spent only a year or two there. Is there a right or wrong answer? No. But it makes counting anything but alums inconsistent. By that criterion Chicago has something like 30 and Harvard under 50 I believe.</p>
<p>If I go to a school, I'd rather have a nobel prize winner as a professor than as someone who happened to go to the same school.</p>