Talk:List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation

This list is fixed. Thye maximum number of noble Prizes genuinely by people working at a specific university or organization is the University of California. See the genuine Nobel site.

I have attempted to organize this talk page by putting similar topics together. I did not delete any comments, although a few headings are now subheadings under common topics. I tried to keep the comments chronological within each heading.Elriana (talk) 19:35, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

What institutions are included in this list?

Request move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move - "Academic affiliation" is unnecessarily vague. Neelix (talk) 22:11, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

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List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation → List of Nobel laureates by academic affiliation – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:28, 16 July 2011 (UTC) -- since in my view it is crazy for a centre of academic research as important and relevant as the MRC Laboratory of molecular biology in Cambridge, with 20 Nobel prizes to its name, to be removed from this list on the grounds that "the article title is 'List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation' - the MRC is not a university. Period." [1] Jheald (talk) 20:26, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - far too vague and will result in the article becoming completely unfocused. Where would the line be drawn? It would be a constant source of contention as to what an 'academic' institution is.

Many very important research institutes, companies and other organisations are excluded from this article, such as the Max Planck Society, Pasteur Institute and NASA. There is a very good reason for that - they aren't universities. To exclude the MRC from this article is not to fail to recognise its importance, merely to understand that it has no relevance to it. Rangoon11 (talk) 20:37, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The Pasteur Institute I think should indeed be here; the Max Planck Society probably not, as it's geographically federated so diversely. Ditto NASA, but LANL might be a more interesting example. Jheald (talk) 21:26, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• Why not just List of Nobel laureates by affiliation? Who cares if they are university, academic, industry, etc.? –CWenger (^ • @) 20:02, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Because that will become a completely unfocused and almost unlimited list of absolutely no use or value. Having gone to a primary school, been in the Boy Scouts or worked at McDonalds could all fit that description. A list by university affiliation is sufficiently focused to be a useful and reasonable article. Rangoon11 (talk) 21:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it will be too difficult to draw a line between something like NASA and McDonald's... –CWenger (^ • @) 23:27, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Marine Biological Laboratory

the MBL in Woods Hole, MA has had 56+ Nobel laureates associated with it. It is a research institute with faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students (internally from Brown, visiting graduate students from all over the world). As an institution, its contributions to science are immeasurable and should be on this list —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.251.32.147 (talk) 22:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I've the same problem with this list. MBL would appear to be a case in point. The Max Planck Society is in a similar situation; somebody in an earlier contribution compared it to the United States National Academy of Sciences, but that's an erroneous comparison - the Max Planck Society is a conglomerate of research institute with faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate and even some masters students (with the degree granted by collaborating universities; full disclosure: I work at one of the Max Planck Institutes as an outreach scientist, and thus am not a disinterested party). The Institute for Advanced Study is another case in point, and the Soviet Academy of Sciences with its own institutes another. All these institutions, even if they do not grant degrees themselves, are an integral part of academia. Nobody changing from a university to any of these institutions would be said to "leave academia". They might not grant degrees themselves, but they provide a key part of academic training for their students. The Nobel prize foundation itself, by the way, has no problem listing them on its List of Nobel Laureates and their Universities, presumably precisely because of the reasons I stated. All in all, I have trouble finding any reasons (beyond strangely narrow definitions that do not reflect the realities of academic life, that is) to leave out these institutions. Particularly as this articles summary defines it not as "List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation", but more generally as "List of Nobel laureates and their affiliation to academic institutions". Markus Poessel (talk) 16:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Non-university Academic Institutions?

Why is this only a list of universities? There are non-university institutions that have nobel prize winners in abundance. For example: the various Max Planck Institutes, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the Institute for Advanced Studies, etc. CERN!

Reply: 1) Because the goal isn't just to find the largest concentration of Nobel laureates. CERN, NASA, etc are all great organizations whose primary purpose is research, not education. Institutions like these tend to concentrate laureates, but being affiliated with such an institution is not the same as teaching or being taught there. The purpose of a list is to compare and contrast similar things. Non-teaching institutions have completely different structures (and budgets and hiring practices) than teaching institutions. To compare the two would be like putting apple varieties and orange varieties in the same list because they are all sub-types of round fruit. 2) Most of the laureates I can name (though I admit I'm biased toward the sciences) who worked at non-teaching institutions are/were also affiliated with at least one teaching institution, often concurrently. So listing only "universities" should not exclude very many laureates. 3)I refer you all once again to the definitional problems mentioned in previous discussions. What counts as an academic institution? What about labs affiliated with universities? Would they be listed separately? What if the lab is affiliated with multiple universities, but individual scientists aren't? What about hospitals? What about groups of hospitals? What about all the different types of professional organizations (e.g. National Academy of Science, American Association of Whatever)? How would we ever decide what should and should not be included? This list is complicated enough without adding even more ambiguity! Kylaramm (talk) 08:24, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Who is included in the list?

NOT IPCC members and the 2007 Peace Prize

I just looked at this, which is cited as a raw URL and has been tagged as a dead link for a few months. It's still not working.

However, this other cited source does work, and contains the information that the named awardee supported by this source shared half of the 2007 Peace Prize along with "hundreds of other scientists who contributed to the group’s work over the past 20 years". This press release makes it clear that half of the prize was "shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr." -- not distinguishing between members of the IPCC.

If any or all of the hundreds of IPCC members sharing the 2007 Peace Prize are to be listed in this article, I suggest that their entries be asterisk'd and footnoted to explain this. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:41, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

According to the Nobel Foundation itself [2] the members didn't win the Nobel, just the organization. This is not unprecedented (the Red Cross has also won for instance). Membership in the IPCC should not be equated with winning a Nobel Prize PantsB (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

• Perhaps we should make clear on the page itself that members of organizations that win the prize are not to be included. I have removed two IPCC members, not out of disrespect, but out of a need to properly categorize contributions. If one IPCC member were included, they all should be, and many of them do not have Wikipedia pages, nor would they necessarily want one. By extension, we would then need to include members of the Red Cross whenever that organization shared in a prize, which would be impractical. Also, I don't think any of us would argue that any individual IPCC contributor should get the same degree of consideration as an individual Nobel prize winner. If we wish to acknowledge those individuals involved with the IPCC, perhaps we should make a list just for them? I do not believe such a wiki list currently exists.Elriana (talk) 17:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
• On a related note, I have removed James Orbinski from the list. James Orbinski was the president of the International Council of Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders) at the time the organization received the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, but was not explicitly named as a recipient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elriana (talk • contribs) 18:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

How are affiliations defined?

Friedman and Feynman

Friedman was briefly a professor at both the university wisconsin-madison and the university of minnesota twin cities. Feynman was also briefly a professor at the university of wisconsin. Should these be included? It seems like they should under the technical rules, but the briefness of the positions seems like it has little meaning in a noble prize count. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dark567 (talk • contribs) 14:26, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Feynman also did some brief work at University of Chicago according to his auotbiograpy 50.148.73.101 (talk) 06:41, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion based on Harvard entry

It seems there is some contention about the number of people in the Harvard entry. I went through the Graduate list and the Attendee list. I found a few that don't seem to have any connection to Harvard. John Bordeen is not a graduate, but did work there. His entry should be moved to either Attendee or Teacher. Elizabeth Blackburn only has an honorary degree. I would say those only with honorary degrees should be removed since anyone can give an honorary degree. If she has more of a connection to the university, then her entry can remain. Eugene O'Neill went to one class at Harvard, but never completed it. Not sure how to handle this situation. Others, like Jean Dausset, I was able to find sources that they did research at Harvard even if their wikipedia article didn't have any indication that they did. For teachers, I was only able to check through TS Eliot. I couldn't find any connection to Harvard for Aaron Ciechanover, Francis Crick, or Willem Einthoven. If someone wants to go through the rest of them, feel free. Thanks! Patken4 (talk) 21:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I went through the rest of the teachers. The following laureates I could not find a anything more than an honorary degree to Harvard, and some I couldn't find any connection: Richard R. Ernst, Nadine Gordimer, Luis Federico Leloir, Charles Scott Sherrington, Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Czeslaw Milosz, Enrico Fermi, Steven Chu, Aage Bohr, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Tsung-Dao Lee, Chen Ning Yang, William Alfred Fowler, Hans Bethe, John Cockcroft, Werner Heisenberg, and Oscar Arias. If someone wants to double check the list and remove those with only an honorary degree or no connection, please do. Patken4 (talk) 13:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Many entries on this list lack citation, which I've tried to use any time adding anyone that doesn't prominently mention the connection on the linked wikipedia page. Going back for all is a pretty big project, especially if we're talking the entire page. However, all of the ones you're listing have citations which are preferable to "its listed on their wikipedia". Follow them. PantsB (talk) 05:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

For the first few listed - Ciechanover - visiting professor from his CV [3], Crick - 2 time visiting professor [4], Einthoven has a citation where its pointed out he was a Dunham lecturer at Harvard. PantsB (talk) 05:48, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

• I would not count honorary degrees at all. And anyone who did not receive an actual degree should not be listed as a "Graduate".
• I do not know the consensus regarding minimum length of attendance/affiliation. Perhaps that should be discussed further. Francis Crick was twice a visiting professor at Harvard [5], but I do not know if that should count as "faculty". Visiting professors have different lengths of tenure and different degrees of affiliation from place to place and time to time. Personally, I would not count visiting professors as faculty because they do not have the same influence over the programs at the university as full faculty do. On the other hand, this is a list of "affiliations", which a visiting professor could be said to have... Elriana (talk) 19:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

About visiting professors, I'm on the fence. You raise a good point about influence over the program and what they could have done in a year. On the other hand, a lot of the official biographies about these laureates do mention their time as a visiting professor. So it would seem their time as a visiting professor at any university seemed to have at least some impact in their career. That is a larger discussion and would impact all the schools listed. Thanks! Patken4 (talk) 13:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Part of the "point" of this wiki is that different schools use differing degrees of strictness regarding how they count. So as to not give an unfair advantage, the broadest definition should be used. I agree honorary degrees shouldn't count since that's not an actual affiliation (just honoring them with an award), but non graduating attendees did attend, and visiting professors were on academic staff. PantsB (talk) 05:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks PantsB, for your explanation. That is good enough for me. This criteria would apply to each university, so it is fair. Checking a few other schools, I see that they also have entries with less than one year of being a professor or student as well, so it seems this rule has been applied fairly. If there are some entries missing from some schools, I encourage people to continue to make the necessary changes. Thanks!

I deleted the laureates with short-term Loeb lectures, which are only two weeks long. While I agree that appointments of a year or slightly less in duration can be influential enough to merit this list, a two-week series of four lectures just isn't. We shouldn't imply that Fermi, Heisenberg, etc, were closely affiliated with Harvard because of such a series.Imareaver (talk) 01:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

"Closely affiliated" isn't the standard. Loeb lecturers are visiting professors, members of academic staff. PantsB (talk) 14:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted. Even short term Loeb lecturers are titled Visiting Professor/Lecturer on Nobel CVs.[6][7][8][9], in current Nobel CVs as visiting professorships [10] [11][12] and listed as a visiting professor/lecturer on the Harvard webpage. PantsB (talk) 15:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Should consultants be added?

Sorry, just a simple question. I'd like to know if consultants (not residing staff) are regarded as affiliates (since this article is said to adopt a broad methodology of counting)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Biomedicinal (talk • contribs) 07:04, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Since a consultant is not Academic Staff or a Graduate, the only category they could fit into is Attendee or Researcher. If an individual consulted on a research project (as opposed to university administration/budgeting), they could be considered a researcher. I would add a note to any such entries specifying that the individual was a consultant and definitely include a reference. That way later editors aren't confused when they cannot find that person's affiliation in any bio or university list. In general, I would only include such a consultant if their interaction with the University or one of its labs was fairly involved. Being paid to walk through a lab and make suggestions on a one-time basis would not count. But training scientists in a particular method over the course of months/years might count, since some direct involvement with research can be inferred. Do you have a particular example you'd like to discuss?Elriana (talk) 19:45, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks! Previously, a user in the Chinese article argued that CUHK should be the sole tertiary institution having Nobel Prize affiliates in the city as others have laureates as consultants only (the user used HKUST as a comparison where several winners were invited to be the consultants in its Institute for Advanced Study and, as I know, no project is conducted by themselves there). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Biomedicinal (talk • contribs) 06:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

NYU

The parenthetical notes under NYU are meant to indicate the actual institution at the time of affiliation. NYU-Poly has a history of association, disassociation and mergers with other schools. The laureates are currently listed under NYU because NYU-Poly is now a part of NYU. I'll spend some time checking that the parentheticals are correct, but removing them seems wrong. Perl, for instance, did not consider himself a graduate of NYU, but rather of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, which later merged with NYU-Poly. If you have opinions on this, please comment here before simply deleting the information. Elriana (talk) 17:26, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Comment on categories

The listing scheme employed by this page is more generous than most universities use in their official counts, and Harvard is dominant in part because of the many visiting lecturers they attract. The other leaders (Columbia and Cambridge) also benefit from this inclusion. The categorization scheme helps somewhat with distinguishing schools that foster Nobel Laureates from those that hire them after the fact (note that MIT has a lot of laureates before/at the time of the award and none after). I am not averse to adding a designation for faculty affiliated with an institution for less than a year, but rechecking the entire list would take a lot of work. Elriana (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

List Mechanics (Sorting/Counting)

The highlight colours are wrong

Surely physics should be blue, and economics should be green? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.103.4.44 (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Why? IF you justify your assertion, others might consider going to the massive amount of effort required to change the colors. Note that much of the list remains unhighlighted because no one has taken the ridiculous amount of time needed to categorize every recipient. Starting over to satisfy an arbitrary color preference seems like a waste. Elriana (talk) 21:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Citations aren't really needed for "unofficial" no. ?

Moreover, I'm thinking if citations are really needed for those "unofficial numbers" because we are using our benchmark to count the affiliates for this ranking, and since the people are listed we can check up the main pages of them. Further, many so call references for the unofficial no. of some universities are in fact wikipedia pages themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.198.203.200 (talk) 05:23, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The unofficial counts are simply the sum of the listed laureates (making sure not to count repeats). So no references should be necessary.Elriana (talk) 19:35, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Updating Counts

I'm going through the Universities with more entries and recounting the number of unique names listed (unofficial count), but any can feel free to double check my work since I could make a mistake. Except Heidelberg most have been minor, and I haven't changed the order to reflect the updated totals yet. PantsB (talk) 22:18, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the bookkeeping work PantsB! Now seems a good time to discuss names that appear more than once under one university. Is it useful to flag these in some way? If so, is a note, such as Note 7 a useful way to do this (see current Univ. of Cambridge entry)? Or is such a flag just adding useless complexity?Elriana (talk) 18:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
  • If it could be done consistently, it would be potentially useful information if only by simplifying the count. Currently I'm running a script over the list of names that numbers and removed duplicates and then manually removing non exact repeats (John Smith and John Q. Smith for example). I don't feel that strongly about it though.PantsB (talk) 06:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorting

Okay, I wrote and ran a program (not a bot) that sorts every list on the page by prize category. (As long as the entries are color-coded properly. We need to get on that!) I'm letting everyone know this because, well, there might be some bugs I didn't catch that could mess up entries. Please tell me if you see anything! Imareaver (talk) 06:49, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Is sorting by prize category really the way we want to sort? I find alphabetical more appealing, especially since not everyone is color coded yet (and I have spent hours adding color-codes. That job will not be done any time soon). Alphabetical is also nice for skimming lists for repeats. In an ideal world, I would put them all in the order of prize date, but I don't think anyone wants to go to that much effort. Elriana (talk) 17:51, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, if you do want to sort by prize category for some reason, contemplate the placement of Linus Pauling and Marie Curie. They each won prizes in two separate fields, but should only be counted (and receive a number in the list) once per list.Elriana (talk) 17:57, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, your program messed up the separation of the Cowles Foundation people in the Yale entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elriana (talk • contribs) 18:03, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Right now, I just have two entries for both Linus Pauling and Marie Curie right next to each other wherever they appear, and that seems to work. Sorting based on category makes sense to me because it allows readers to easily see how each university's Nobel laureates break down by category. That reveals interesting information, like how strong MIT is in economics even though they're stereotypically a tech school, and stuff like that. But you make a good point about alphabetical sorting for checking repeats, so the page is now sorted alphabetically after the category-sorting. Hopefully nothing broke in the process. Imareaver (talk) 02:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Still need to fix the Cowles Foundation people in the Yale entry. Is there a way to make your code leave them alone once they're fixed? Elriana (talk) 19:26, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, forgot about that, thanks! Yeah, it was a really easy modification, and I just did it.Imareaver (talk) 22:50, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

The sensible way to sort the lists would be by date. But if they must be sorted alphabetically, then please alphabetically by surname, rather than by first name. Jheald (talk) 21:26, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorting by date would be extremely time consuming, since there are no dates directly associated with this list. The only reasonable way I can think to do it would be to write a script that goes to one of the other list pages (List of Nobel laureates in FIELD) to retrieve the dates automatically. I do not currently possess the skills to write this script. In the meantime, sorting by last name would be nice. Even then, there will be errors with compound or double last names, since they are indistinguishable from middle names.Elriana (talk) 17:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

References section sorting?

The references section claims "The following is a list of university homepages", but this is no longer true. Several of the references are to articles and/or news stories on individual laureates. There should be a place for such references, since they can shine more light on the specific affiliations of individual laureates than many of the university websites. But either they need their own reference/notes section, or the text in the References section should be changed. Anyone have opinions on this?Elriana (talk) 20:46, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Accessibility for color blind

I understand that colorblind people may have had issues with the previous highlighting scheme, but the new abbreviation tagging scheme seems pretty useless. If you want to know the particular field of a single laureate, you can always click on the laureate. The point of the colors was to provide a visual clue about the prevalence of certain categories at each school. Could we not both highlight AND tag? or maybe highlight the tags themselves? So colorblind people can read them, but the rest of us still get the visual information?? Also, the weird '?' I get when mousing over the new tags makes them seem like broken links instead of useful information. There has got to be a more elegant way to do this.Elriana (talk) 16:58, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

sure, we could do both, but the <abbr>...</abbr> is the accessible method for presenting abbreviations. Frietjes (talk) 17:01, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Specific Counting issues

Harvard Count

The Harvard numbers are wrong; it double counts whereas other schools do not (see T.S. Elliot for example). Either Columbia, Chicago, or Cambridge should be at the top in recent years, but there is no way it can be Harvard (Harvard being Harvard would have made a big deal if this was the case; I say this as a Harvard alumni). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.46.22.208 (talk) 02:53, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

As for all universities, all four categories are counted and the repeats removed. Doing this I count (69+16+68+19)-20=172-20=152. Feel free to check my math, but my method of counting is the same as that used for all other universities. Please comment here about any issues you have with the total before editing the page (again). Elriana (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I noticed there is a statement in the article's lead that says, "As per official records, University of Cambridge has the highest number of Nobel Laureates (graduates as well as total official affiliations)." However, in the tables Harvard is listed as having produced 69 graduates, whereas the University of Cambridge has produced 65. For accuracy, the sentence should be amended to reflect this. How about: "As per official records, University of Cambridge has the highest number of affiliated Nobel Laureates, and Harvard University has the greatest number of graduates who are Nobel Laureates." Thoughts? Stpolicy (talk) 13:53, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

The original sentence is technically correct. Cambridge has the highest *official* count. Harvard's official count does not include graduates at all. Therefore, the statement about Harvard should not be in the sentence that begins, "As per official records . . ." However, one could consider a record of graduation an official record, even if the school doesn't tally the laureates who are graduates. To be even more clear, we should probably change "As per official records" to something like, "According to official counts performed by the schools themselves". I'm putting this wording in now, but am open to suggestions regarding better phrasing. Many readers seem to overlook the implications of the fact that the *official* counts use wildly inconsistent methodologies, and will never "agree" with a list that attempts to use a standard method of counting. Elriana (talk) 19:24, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Elriana! I'd like to point out, though, that Harvard's official count (which can be found at http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates) does include graduates: the most recent Laureate they list is Martin Karplus (Chemistry 2013), who earned an AB from Harvard; and the very first Laureate they list is TW Richards (Chemistry 1914), who earned an AB, an MA, and a PhD from Harvard. It seems Harvard's official counting strategy closely aligns with the Nobel Foundation's strategy, only including persons (whether alumni or not) who were awarded the Prize while at Harvard. Stpolicy (talk) 22:17, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Ah, so they just don't include most graduates because it is highly unusual to receive a Nobel Prize with no other affiliation than having received (or still working on) a degree somewhere, even Harvard. Luckily, the wording in the article itself was general enough to avoid this detail. Thanks, though, for checking our accuracy/logic! Elriana (talk) 14:42, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Columbia and Cambridge

A ridiculous edit war has been taking place over the number of Nobel laureates "affiliated" with Columbia University, and over whether the "official" lists of Noble laureates claimed by Columbia and Cambridge Universities include people who had been affiliated with them for less than a year.

As far as I can tell, the web site which is cited as alleged support for the claim of 97 Nobel laureates for Columbia is nothing of the sort. By my count (carried out manually), the list on that page contains 72 names (9 for chemistry, 12 for economics, 3 for peace, 21 for physiology or medicine, 2 for literature and 25 for physics). The editors who keep reverting this figure back to 97 need to provide some convincing justification for it or stop edit warring to keep it in. If the extra 25 are awards earned since 2004 (which is the last year of any included in the cited list), then a source needs to be provided for that.

Likewise, the Los Angeles Times article cited as allegedly supporting the assertion that "University of Cambridge's official count does include affiliates for less than one year" also does nothing of the sort as far as I can see. What it says is "Cambridge University in England, which also uses the most liberal of counting methods, credits itself with more Nobels than the University of Chicago--74" (this was in 2000) without giving any speciic details whatever of how the Cambridge University authorities arrived at their figure. The article does say elsewhere that the University of Chicago's "official" list of prize winners includes Kenneth Arrow, who "taught for one year" at that university. If the assertion in question is an inference from these two items of information, it's an extremely dubious one in my opinion, but in any case it would be a synthetic conclusion not explicitly included in the source. As such, it would constitute original research and by Wikipedia's policy on such material should not be included in the article. Unless a good source can be found which explicitly supports this statement, it should be removed from the article.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:18, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I would support such a removal. The edit war has been as a result of a certain editor's unwillingness/inability to use edit summaries, engage in a coherent and civil discussion, and making bulk series of edits which also added inappropriate text to the lead and made other unexplained edits elsewhere in the article. Rangoon11 (talk) 13:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The table shows that there are total 97 laureates affiliated with Columbia. --Poliman97 (talk) 20:35, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There are a couple of problems with this. First, there are only 96 distinct laureates listed in the table for Columbia, so where does the number 97 come from? Second, the total numbers given for the other institutions appear to come from some sort of "official" lists, whereas you say that the figure for Columbia has been obtained by counting the names in a list apparently compiled by different Wikipedia editors using who knows what criteria for inclusion as an "affiliate". Whatever number you come up with, it would appear to me to have been obtained by a process that would clearly constitute original research. Note that the original research resides not in the process of counting the number of names in the list—which is a trivial process—but in representing it as the total number of Nobel laureates "affiliated" with Columbia University (whatever that means) as if it were in some way comparable to the numbers given for the other institutions. Unless the figure listed for Columbia can be supported with a citation to a reliable source it should be omitted, in my opinion.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:34, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

In principle there is nothing wrong with names being added to the list without citations, but once those uncited names have been properly challenged citations become imperative or the content should be removed.Rangoon11 (talk) 15:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The problem is not specifically with names being uncited, but with the article's stating that the total number of names in any of the lists is "the" total of the number of Nobel laureates supposedly "affiliated" with the corresponding institution when the criteria for including names in the list—whether reliably sourced or not—have been decided by the individual Wikipedia editors who added them.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 16:15, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I see the number of Nobel laureate supposedly "affiliated" with Columbia has recently been changed back to 97 with no reason given for the change. Since the table contains only 96 distinct names I am at a loss as to understand why people keep reinserting 97. The numbers of names in each column are clearly 38, 14, 60 and 9, and these sum to 121. But there are 17 names that are listed twice (Penzias, Blumberg, Benacerraf, Varmus, Muller, Rabi, Langmuir, Rainwater, Bloch, Lederman, Murray, Ramsey, Axel, Hoffman, Solow, Fitch and Vickrey) and four that are listed 3 times (Richards, Lederberg, Schwartz and Friedman), making a total of 25 duplicates that need to be subtracted to get the total number of distinct names in the table. Subtracting 25 from 121 gives 96, not 97. Please either provide some justification for the number 97, or stop reinserting it.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 00:52, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Multiple Laureates per year

there is a noticeable tendency to award the same medal to multiple researchers. This seems to accelerate in the past 2 decades. It makes sense: smart people at the U figured out that teamwork pays off. But does this not skew the sums in a way which is not purposeful ? Universities which happened to be successful in the 1990-2012 period and received "awarded jointly" medals suddenly carry a much bigger weight as the table counts heads and not "part-of-medal". Any bright ideas how to weed out this time-bias ?

Whats different about the OTHER universities ?

why are they treated differently than the others - i dont get it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.5.184.243 (talk) 13:03, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to know the benchmark of getting into the "other universities" section which starts with University of Minnesota? I mean, University of California, San Diego has 20 affiliates based on the standard of this ranking which is lower than 21 of Minnesota but it can have its own section instead? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.198.203.200 (talk) 14:06, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• I don't think the threshold is something anyone has made official. I'd say, if one of the "other universities" has more than 20 laureates (please double check for any repeat names), go ahead and move it to its own section. Many of the listings for the "other universities" are incomplete, and some may well prove to have concentrations of laureates notable enough for their own section as information is added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elriana (talk • contribs) 19:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

University of California

I feel the University of California's total count should be mentioned in the introduction, especially since the University of London's total count is discussed. A quick count from my side, summarizing the individual campuses' lists in this article and removing double counts, suggest a total of 107 affiliated laureates, more than any other university.Kiki 233 (talk) 08:57, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I reverted for a few reasons. For one, its not clear the University of London and University of California are equivalent frameworks. They may be sufficiently equivalent to justify a similar statement but that doesn't seem clear from a basic look over of the different frameworks and how they are commonly (from my perspective) perceived.

More importantly, the "more than any other university" is uncited and unsupported by the article. Assuming the 107 number is correct based on names in the article and duplicates were correctly dealt with (I count 104), it is not the most on the page. Harvard University has 124 unique affiliated winners. Furthermore, its entirely possible that there's another university with a claim for more that no one has come up with yet, as Columbia and Cambridge are both just under 100. PantsB (talk) 18:22, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, I have remover the phrasing "more than any other university". However, I still strongly feel the UC should be mentioned in the introduction. I also note that the University of London mention is unsupported by citations. Kiki 233 (talk) 09:57, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Golden Triangle (UK universities)

Message copied from Talkpage of Rangoon11:

Don't bother changing back the correct version of the web page to your laughably incorrect one. If your not going to be factually honest with the site, then get out of it!!!!!! As the founder said at the Berkman Law Center at Harvard University one evening in the first half of 2005, Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia of facts that can be corrected by anyone on earth so long as the corrections are verifiable by any reliable source(s) that can be checked. Your version of the web page is not only intentionally incorrect, but also devoid of any factual source to back up what you say. I checked the Columbia University website and it doesn't even come close to what your count of the Nobel Prize winners was. Spread your falsehood on a blog and not on an encyclopedia that requires verifiable facts from reliable sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.132.234 (talk) 13:01, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Issues noted and fixed

Other issues after fixing table formatting errors

I just fixed a bunch of table formatting errors. I think that's right now, but I noticed a couple of other possible issues in passing.

1. University of The Witwatersrand appears twice in the table
2. Albert Einstein appeared outside of the table (just above it). That seemed to be being caused by some stuff in the wikitext in between the Nagoya University and Ohio State University entries. I removed that stuff.

Someone who knows something about the content of this article should che3ck it over. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 07:59, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Whitman College and the University of Oregon

Walter Brattain's biography at nobelprize.org indicates he earned his BA from Whitman College and MA from the University of Oregon. Likewise William Murphy's bio indicates he earned an AB from the University of Oregon. Neither institution is included in the list. Thanks! 76.102.42.53 (talk) 09:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Paul Crutzen

Paul Crutzen recieved his nobel-prize in chemestry working at Gutenberg University Mainz, where he did great part of his research work at the Max Plank Insitute Mainz - this is correctly noted in the article on Crutzen, but in this list he is listed under Chicago while GU Mainz is not mentioned in the list!! --62.156.247.219 (talk) 08:57, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Problem with University of Paris

The actual (2011, 09) table is

Affiliations[13]	Graduate[14]	Attendee or Researcher[15]	Academic staff before or at the time of award[16]	Academic staff after award[17]
University of Paris's count includes the successor Universities Paris I-XIII.
26	Gabriel Lippmann Paul Sabatier François Jacob Jacques Monod Louis de Broglie Charles Richet Albert Schweitzer André Frédéric Cournand Marie Curie Louis Renault Jean Dausset Giorgos Seferis Albert Fert Alfred Kastler Maurice Allais Henri Moissan Irène Joliot-Curie Pierre Curie	Rene Cassin Léon Jouhaux Samuel Beckett Roger Guillemin Odysseus Elytis Jules Bordet Gerhard Ertl Albert Gobat	Gabriel Lippmann Louis de Broglie Marie Curie Albert Fert Jean Baptiste Perrin Alfred Kastler Henri Moissan Irène Joliot-Curie Jean Dausset Charles Richet François Jacob Jacques Monod Louis Renault	Georges Charpak Alphonse Laveran Henri Becquerel Andre Michel Lwoff Charles Nicolle Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov Jean-Marie Lehn Nicolaas Bloembergen Victor Grignard Yves Chauvin Abdus Salam Santiago Ramon y Cajal Jules Bordet Charles-Edouard Guillaume Corneille Heymans Giulio Natta Luis Leloir George Smoot

I think we should add some names

University of Paris

Affiliations[18]	Graduate[19]	Attendee or Researcher[20]	Academic staff before or at the time of award[21]	Academic staff after award[22]
University of Paris's count includes the successor Universities Paris I-XIII.
47	Maurice Allais Paul Henri Balluet d'Estournelles de Constant (LLB) Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (PhD 1974) Henri Becquerel (DSc 1888) Henri Bergson (BA 1880) Léon Bourgeois (DCL) Louis de Broglie (DSc 1924) Ferdinand Buisson (DLitt) René Cassin (DCL) Georges Charpak (DSc 1955) Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (DSc 1962) André Frédéric Cournand (MD 1930) Marie Curie (DSc 1903) Pierre Curie (DSc 1895) Jean Dausset (MD 1945) Gérard Debreu (DSc) Albert Fert (PhD 1963) Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (DSc 1957) François Jacob (MD 1947) Irène Joliot-Curie (DSc 1924) Frédéric Joliot-Curie (DSc 1930) Alfred Kastler (DSc 1936) Gabriel Lippmann (DSc 1875) André Lwoff (MD 1927 DSc 1932) Henri Moissan (DSc 1880) Jacques Monod (DSc 1941) Luc Montagnier (MD) Louis Néel (BSc) Charles Nicolle (MD) Frédéric Passy (LLB) Jean Perrin (DSc 1897) Louis Renault (DCL) Charles Richet (MD 1877 ; DSc 1878) Romain Rolland (D Litt 1895) Paul Sabatier (DSc 1880) Jean-Paul Sartre (BA 1927) (refused the Price) Giorgos Seferis (LLB)	Samuel Beckett Jules Bordet Gerhard Ertl Odysseus Elytis Albert Gobat Roger Guillemin Léon Jouhaux Roger Martin du Gard François Mauriac Albert Schweitzer Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff	Gabriel Lippmann Louis de Broglie Marie Curie Albert Fert Jean Perrin Alfred Kastler Henri Moissan Irène Joliot-Curie Jean Dausset Charles Richet François Jacob Jacques Monod Louis Renault	George Smoot

=

Number of Laureates as in October 13th 2014

As two former attendees of the University of Paris received nobel prizes, Patrick Modiano (literature) and Jean Tirole (economics), shouldn't be number of laureates updated?

--Canyouhearmemajortom? (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Countries and Flags

The goal of this list is not to sort laureates by country (there's another list for that). But I find that the flags help me mentally place the university names. Some people seem to prefer spelling out the country name or not including it at all. Before we make systematic changes, can we please discuss the reasoning behind them? Elriana (talk) 23:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Per MOS:FLAG these universities should not have flags, especially the US universities that have nothing to do with the US other then location. User:Ohconfucius in general removes flags per the this MOS. He did this here and I requested that he remove the countries completely as they serve no purpose and should not be in the section headings. Why should it say Harvard University United States. While it might be helpful the school is wikilinked below. If you want to know where it is click the link. If someone wants to add it to the box the school has I don't have strong objections to it but in the section heading is just illogical. So per MOS:FLAG it should not be a flag and in my opinion it does not belong in the heading with the school. Look at the version before my revert and tell me if you think that makes sense. XFEM Skier (talk) 03:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

@Elriana:The use of flags in the article were in breach of MOS:FLAG because the notion of national representation does not apply – universities here do not "represent" the countries. In addition, they also breach MOS:HEAD, which advises "Headings should not contain images, including flag icons." Also bearing in mind the list contains the names of the most prestigious universities in the world, and we are not talking about University of Westminster, I think we can dispense with the flags or the country names in the heading. I would have no objections per se if you want to rearrange the table to account for the countries where the universities are, but I don't really see much point, as you already indicated. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:57, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the justification. I have no strong objection to the edits given your arguments, but I did feel they should be articulated. I would point out, however, that most universities do represent their countries of origin. In the US, even those that are not state institutions are frequently funded through the state and/or federal governments. The sciences in particular are generally funded by government grants through agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. So in a very tangible sense, research performed at private institutions such as Caltech and Harvard represents the intellectual pursuits of the United States. Just something to keep in mind.Elriana (talk) 16:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Harvard should NOT be first

Either Chicago or Cambridge should be first. Harvard doesn't even come close. Many of the entries listed are outright false or unverified.

As a Harvard student, if Harvard was top for Nobel prizes, there would be a lot of bragging about it. But it's not, and even Harvard acknowledges that.

We are either going to list the universities according to their total affiliations or according to their official counts only. In that sense, your ordering simply doesn't make any sense. It doesn't strictly follow neither of the two rules. In your ordering, Yale and Stanford (both of their official counts are in 20s range) are above Harvard when Harvard's official count is in 40s range. Ordering by official counts only is not feasible, since many universities do not publish their official counts. Moreover, you should first prove what entries are "falsified" before doing what you just did. The list has been like that for as long as I can remember.

^

Your response makes no sense at all. Fine, we sort by official count only. My mistake then for not sorting the rest properly.

Ordering by official counts IS feasible. Many universities do not publish their total counts, only their official counts. Harvard is a good example of this. Their website does not list 150+ laureates on their website, it lists 48. So this idea of a "total count" is original research, and bad research at that.

You can't have been around here for very long, as Harvard was never placed at the top. The top position was a struggle between Cambridge and Columba until this absurd, immeasurable idea of "total affiliations" started to rip apart any credibility this list ever had. Harvard never came close to being top, and rightly so.

Furthermore, the list is NOT consistent because some universities only have their official count contributing to their position in the list, while others have the extended unofficial count. This is terrible methodology. How is it fair to rank one university for publishing their official count, and another for publishing tenuous associations?

I've been through the list and taken the official counts for ease of viewing. The page needs to be reordered as necessary.

Harvard - 48 Columbia - 82 Cambridge - 90 Chicago - 89 MIT - 78 Berkeley - 61 Oxford - 51 Stanford - 27 Yale - 25 Paris - 51 Gottingen - 44 Cornell - 41 Heidelberg - 32 Humboldt - 29 Princeton - 37 Johns Hopkins - 36 Ludwig Maximilians - 13 NYU - 4 Caltech - 31 ETH Zurich - 29 Pennsylvania - 28 UCL - 21 Manchester - 21 UIUC - 24 Rockefeller - 24 Minnesota - 23 Washington St. Louis - 22 Carnegie Mellon - 19 University of Zurich - 12 UCSD - 20 Michigan - 20

Please read at least the lead of the article before making large changes to the structure of the list. The lead states the order of the list and the reason for using that order. If there are any incorrect affiliations feel free to bring them up. If you disagree with the methodology that can be discussed here and if consensus is reached a change can be made, but look through the talk page and the archives of it first since it is not worth rehashing conversations in general. XFEM Skier (talk) 14:49, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, Harvard University educated 69 Nobel laureates (look at the list and check), but its official count is only 48. Should we then still count official counts only? As the introduction says, because of issues like this, we use the broadest definition of affiliation for the total counts. Moreover, Harvard doesn't brag about its Nobel laureates count because 1) the 152 count includes attendees, researchers and those faculty that joined after winning their Nobel prize (if we use a definition looser than Harvard's official count but stricter than the total count on the wiki article, Harvard's total will still be quite large but possibly be lower than that of Columbia, Chicago and Cambridge) and 2) it has lots and lots of things other than that to brag about (e.g. its billionaires count, presidents count, etc). Wisdompower (talk)

It seems to be a good idea to choose some kind of official count. I am sure Harvard would brag about Nobels if it would feel it could ;) The current methodology seems bias towards universities into which we've done more research to find any kind of associations, so the other ones have "official count" competing against a huge unofficial count from Harvard. I am sure if we investigated for unofficial count from other places some of them would beat Harvard too. I think the official count should be the one which is currently used, and then any other laureates can be listed under a column of "unofficial", but the list must not be sorted by the unofficial ones. I cannot find where this change took place to change it so Harvard was put top of the list, but if you go back for a few years then it is clear it used to be much lower.

What is your proposed methodology for listing the schools? The current is logical and appears to have been consensus for a little while now. Please provide a constructive idea as opposed to just complaining that Harvard is first. Also note that this is not a ranking, but a list of affiliations. By all means propose a better idea or do research to show that other schools beat Harvard. Also please sign your talk page posts with four ~. XFEM Skier (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint you (whoever you are), but Harvard should definitely be top of the list. I suggest you read this article http://articles.latimes.com/2000/oct/19/business/fi-38718 which describes how for instance the University of Chicago has one of the most "aggressive" nobel counting methods, while UC Berkeley uses a relatively conservative method. If we were to use "official" lists, then it would still not be "correct", since different universties apply different counting standards (and for instance the University of Chicago has spent a lot of time boosting their tally). If Harvard were to apply a more liberal counting method, its nobel count would be higher. And no, no other university would be able to beat Harvard's unofficial list.

In any case, Harvard doesn't need to brag about anything. Harvard is Harvard. this article is simply intended to provide an overview of nobel laurates and their university affiliations (as student, faculty, visiting scholar). All laureates in this list should be referenced. I really don't think moving over to an "official" list is going to improve the article. Fgimm (talk) 09:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

These issues have been hashed out higher on the talk page. Cambridge University and the University of Chicago admittedly use very broad definitions of affiliates. The purpose of this page is to apply the same standard across all universities, rather than the more reserved/restricted/conservative counts other universities, including Harvard, use. The Harvard entries have all been verified, on the laureate's main page, the primary Harvard citation and/or or in the citation as there has been past contention regarding their totals. Some individuals at highly prestigious universities have invested in this "Nobel inflation" so as to further enhance their institution's prestige and this has resulted in backlash. But comparing apples to apples, (as Fgimm put it) "Harvard is Harvard." PantsB (talk) 17:42, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

1) Thank you PantsB.

2) For consistency's sake, the page is ordered by unofficial count. The official counts are extremely variable in their methodology and do not exist for many schools further down the list. Using such inconsistent measures would not give the ordering on this page any credibility at all. If you wish to discuss the methodology used for counting, please start by reading the previous discussions #How are affiliations defined? and #Specific counting issues.

3) If the objection to the current totals stems from a dislike of counting certain categories, perhaps that could be dealt with. Is there a way to make the list resortable by number of graduates or by faculty at the time of the award? This would be a formatting/coding change, not a total count or methodology change.

4) Some schools will always be better researched than others. This issue is much more noticeable in the Other Universities section, where a single laureate's affiliation can move a school up the list quite a ways. Most of the universities with >20 laureates listed have been well-researched. I personally have gone through the lists for Harvard, MIT and Caltech and I have noticed similar efforts for Cambridge, Colombia, Chicago and Cornell. If we wish to minimize the effect of research time on number of laureates for a given school, we need to revisit the way visiting lecturers and consultants are dealt with. These are usually the laureates whose affiliation with a given school is only found through research beyond wikipedia and the main Nobel website. The current policy of counting any and all visiting lecturers as academic staff was discussed previously. While I do not like them counting the same way as full faculty, no one has come up with a clear way of distinguishing such short-term associations in a fair and consistent manner. (See #How are affiliations defined?) Elriana (talk) 18:30, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

What was the conclusion of this discussion? Things do not seem to have been resolved

The resolution is that there is no change to the page or even suggested change to the page. The count is determined as noted on the page. If someone wants that changed than that needs to be brought here. It was not so this issue is basically closed with no change. XFEM Skier (talk) 16:22, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Block user

Could an admin please block user 173.32.72.64? He/she keeps deleting an official laureate from Oxford's count, plus editing the count to a lower number. Kiki 233 (talk) 19:28, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

This is not the appropriate place for that request. Please see WP:ANI. XFEM Skier (talk) 19:32, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Added Individual - List needs reordering

I recently added George Akerlof to the Georgetown University affiliation in the column "academic staff after award." This brings the University's total number to require, which requires its position in the list to be modified. Can someone do this (I am not very good at manipulating tables on Wikipedia)? Ergo Sum 18:32, 3 October 2015 (UTC)