TheNobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed on "those who conferred the greatest benefit on humankind" in the fields ofPhysics,Chemistry,Physiology or Medicine,Literature,Peace, andEconomic Sciences,^{[nb 1][1]} instituted byAlfred Nobel's last will, which specified that a part of his fortune be used to create the prizes. Eachlaureate (recipient) receives a gold medal, adiploma and a sum of money, which is decided annually by the Nobel Foundation.^[2] They are widely recognized as one of the most prestigious honours awarded in the aforementioned fields.^[3]

First instituted in 1901, theNobel Prize has been awarded to a total of 965 individuals and 27 organizations as of 2023^[update].^[4]Among them, 28Swiss nationals have been honored with theNobel Prize.^{[nb 2]} Additionally, two laureates acquired Swiss citizenship throughnaturalization after the award:Wolfgang Pauli andJack Steinberger.^{[nb 3]}

Nine organizations headquartered in Switzerland have received theNobel Peace Prize.^{[nb 4]} TheOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded twice, and theInternational Committee of the Red Cross three times.^[13] Five of these organizations were also founded in Switzerland, and eight of them had their headquarters inGeneva, a city hosting more than 40 international organizations and 750non-governmental organizations.^[14]

The firstNobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1901, went to the Swiss humanitarianHenry Dunant. The latest Swiss laureates areMichel Mayor andDidier Queloz, who received theNobel Prize in Physics in 2019. The 28 prizes are distributed as follows: eight for medicine, eight for chemistry, seven for physics, three for peace, and two for literature. No Swiss national has yet received aNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Switzerland is among thecountries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita.^[8][15] Several factors have been suggested as possible explanation, including large public funding for research,^[16] the presence of highly ranked universities such asETH Zürich andEPFL,^[16] and theneutrality of Switzerland in the two World Wars, which attracted scientists from abroad.^[8] The Nobel Prize has also been often recognized asbeing biased towardsWestern countries.^[17][18][19] According to Nobel laureateWerner Arber, the large number of awards to Swiss nationals is "likely a statistical anomaly", whileRichard R. Ernst believes the number of Swiss laureates will keep increasing as the country still attracts talent.^[8]

Swiss Nobel laureates

Year	Image	Laureate	Born	Died	Field	Rationale
1901		Henry Dunant, co-founder of theRed Cross	8 May 1828 inGeneva	30 October 1910 inHeiden	Peace	"for his humanitarian efforts to help wounded soldiers and create international understanding"[20] prize shared withFrédéric Passy
1902		Charles Albert Gobat, politician and director of thePermanent International Peace Bureau	21 May 1843 inTramelan	16 March 1914 inBern	Peace	"for his eminently practical administration of theInter-Parliamentary Union"[21] prize shared withÉlie Ducommun
1902		Élie Ducommun, peace activist and director of thePermanent International Peace Bureau	19 February 1833 inGeneva	7 December 1906 inBern	Peace	"for his untiring and skilful directorship of the Bern Peace Bureau"[22] prize shared withCharles Albert Gobat
1909		Emil Theodor Kocher, physician who introduced scientific methods in surgery	28 August 1841 inBern	27 July 1917 inBern	Physiology or Medicine	"for his work on thephysiology,pathology andsurgery of thethyroid gland"[23]
1913		Alfred Werner, professor at theUniversity of Zurich	12 December 1866 inMulhouse,France acquired Swiss citizenship in 1894[24]	15 November 1919 inZurich	Chemistry	"in recognition of his work onthe linkage of atoms in molecules by which he has thrown new light on earlier investigations and opened up new fields of research especially ininorganic chemistry"[25]
1919		Carl Spitteler, poet and writer	24 April 1845 inLiestal	29 December 1924 inLucerne	Literature	"in special appreciation of hisepic,Olympian Spring"[26]
1920		Charles Édouard Guillaume, physicist, head of theInternational Bureau of Weights and Measures	15 February 1861 inFleurier	13 June 1938 inSèvres,France	Physics	"in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies innickel steel alloys"[27]
1921		Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist who developed thetheory of relativity	14 March 1879 inUlm,Germany acquired Swiss citizenship in 1901[28]	18 April 1955 inPrinceton,USA	Physics	"for his services toTheoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of thephotoelectric effect"[29]
1937		Paul Karrer,organic chemist known for his contributions onvitamins	21 April 1889 inMoscow,Russia	18 June 1971 inZurich	Chemistry	"for his investigations oncarotenoids,flavins andvitamins A andB2"[30] prize shared withNorman Haworth
1939		Leopold Ružička, chemist, professor atETH Zurich	13 September 1887 inVukovar,Austria-Hungary acquired Swiss citizenship in 1917[31]	26 September 1976 inZurich	Chemistry	"for his work onpolymethylenes and higherterpenes"[32] prize shared withAdolf Butenandt
1946		Hermann Hesse, poet, novelist and painter	2 July 1877 inCalw,Germany acquired Swiss citizenship in 1924[33]	9 August 1962 inMontagnola	Literature	"for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classicalhumanitarian ideals and high qualities of style"[34]
1948		Paul Hermann Müller, chemist atJ. R. Geigy AG who synthesizedDDT	12 January 1899 inOlten	12 October 1965 inBasel	Physiology or Medicine	"for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contactpoison against severalarthropods"[35]
1949		Walter Rudolf Hess, physiologist and professor at theUniversity of Zurich who mapped areas of the brain	17 March 1881 inFrauenfeld	12 August 1973 inAscona	Chemistry	"for his discovery of the functional organization of theinterbrain as a coordinator of the activities of theinternal organs"[36] prize shared withEgas Moniz
1950		Tadeusz Reichstein, chemist and professor at theUniversity of Basel who contributed to the isolation ofcortisone	20 July 1897 inWloclawek,Poland acquired Swiss citizenship in 1914[37]	1 August 1996 inBasel	Physiology or Medicine	"for their discoveries relating to thehormones of theadrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects"[38] prize shared withEdward Calvin Kendall andPhilip Showalter Hench
1951		Max Theiler, South African-American virologist and physician	30 January 1899 inPretoria,South Africa[nb 5]	11 August 1972 inNew Haven,USA	Physiology or Medicine	"for his discoveries concerningyellow fever and how to combat it"[41]
1952		Felix Bloch, physicist, first director-general ofCERN and among the developers ofnuclear magnetic resonance	23 October 1905 inZurich	10 September 1983 inZurich	Physics	"for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith"[42] prize shared withEdward Mills Purcell
1957		Daniel Bovet, pharmacologist who discoveredantihistamines	23 March 1907 inNeuchâtel	8 April 1992 inRome,Italy	Physiology or Medicine	"for his discoveries relating to synthetic compounds that inhibit the action of certain body substances, and especially their action on thevascular system and theskeletal muscles"[43]
1975		Vladimir Prelog, organic chemist, professor atETH Zurich	23 July 1906 inSarajevo,Austria-Hungary acquired Swiss citizenship in 1959[44]	7 January 1998 inZurich	Chemistry	"for his research into thestereochemistry oforganic molecules andreactions"[45] prize shared withJohn Cornforth
1978		Werner Arber, microbiologist and geneticist, professor at theUniversity of Geneva andBasel	3 June 1929 inGränichen	—	Physiology or Medicine	"for the discovery ofrestriction enzymes and their application to problems ofmolecular genetics"[46] prize shared withDaniel Nathans andHamilton O. Smith
1986		Heinrich Rohrer, physicist,IBM Fellow	6 June 1933 inBuchs	16 May 2013 inWollerau	Physics	"for their design of thescanning tunneling microscope"[47] prize shared withGerd Binning andErnst Ruska
1987		K. Alex Müller, physicist,IBM Fellow	20 April 1927 inBasel	9 January 2023 inZurich	Physics	"for their important break-through in the discovery ofsuperconductivity in ceramic materials"[48] prize shared withJ. Georg Bednorz
1991		Richard R. Ernst, physical chemist, professor atETH Zurich	14 August 1933 inWinterthur	4 June 2021 inWinterthur	Chemistry	"for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolutionnuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy"[49]
1992		Edmond H. Fischer, biochemist, professor at theUniversity of Washington	6 April 1920 inShanghai,China acquired Swiss citizenship in 1947[50]	27 August 2021 inSeattle,USA	Physiology or Medicine	"for their discoveries concerning reversibleprotein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism"[51] prize shared withEdwin G. Krebs
1996		Rolf M. Zinkernagel, professor of experimentalimmunology at theUniversity of Zurich	6 January 1944 inBasel	—	Physiology or Medicine	"for their discoveries concerning the specificity of the cell mediatedimmune defence"[52] prize shared withPeter C. Doherty
2002		Kurt Wüthrich, chemist and biophysicist, professor atETH Zurich andThe Scripps Research Institute	4 October 1938 inAarburg	—	Chemistry	"for his development ofnuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biologicalmacromolecules in solution"[53] prize shared withJohn B. Fenn andKoichi Tanaka
2017		Jacques Dubochet, biophysicist, professor at theUniversity of Lausanne	8 June 1942 inAigle	—	Chemistry	"for developingcryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination ofbiomolecules in solution"[54] prize shared withJoachim Frank andRichard Henderson
2019		Michel Mayor, astrophysicist, professor at theUniversity of Geneva	12 January 1942 inLausanne	—	Physics	"for the discovery of anexoplanet orbiting asolar-type star"[55] prize shared withJim Peebles andDidier Queloz
2019		Didier Queloz, astronomer, professor at theUniversity of Cambridge andGeneva	23 February 1966 inGeneva	—	Physics	"for the discovery of anexoplanet orbiting asolar-type star"[56] prize shared withJim Peebles andMichel Mayor

Nobel laureates who acquired Swiss citizenship after the award

Year	Image	Laureate	Born	Died	Field	Rationale
1945		Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian theoretical physicist and pioneer ofquantum mechanics	25 April 1900 inVienna,Austria naturalized Swiss in 1949 (place of origin:Zollikon)[57][nb 6]	15 December 1958 inZurich	Physics	"for the discovery of theExclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle"[59]
1988		Jack Steinberger, American physicist noted for his work withneutrinos	25 May 1921 inBad Kissingen,Germany naturalized Swiss in 2000 (place of origin:Geneva)[60][61][8]	12 December 2020 inGeneva	Physics	"for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of thedoublet structure of theleptons through the discovery of themuon neutrino"[62] prize shared withLeon M. Lederman andMelvin Schwartz

Organizations headquartered in Switzerland who received the Nobel Peace Prize

Year	Logo	Organization	Founded	Headquarters	Rationale
1910		Permanent International Peace Bureau	1891,Bern	Bern (1891–1924) Geneva (1924–2017)[63] Berlin,Germany (2017–present)[64]	"for acting as a link between the peace societies of the various countries, and helping them to organize the world rallies of the internationalpeace movement"[65]
1917		International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)	1863,Geneva	Geneva	"for the efforts to take care of wounded soldiers andprisoners of war and their families"[66]
1938	—	Nansen International Office for Refugees	1921,Geneva	Geneva	"for having carried on the work ofFridtjof Nansen to the benefit ofrefugees across Europe"[67]
1944		International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)	1863,Geneva	Geneva	"for the great work it has performed duringthe war on behalf of humanity"[68]
1954		Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)	1950,Geneva	Geneva	"for its efforts to heal the wounds of war by providing help and protection torefugees all over the world"[69]
1963		International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)	1863,Geneva	Geneva	"for promoting the principles of theGeneva Convention and cooperation with theUN"[70] prize shared with theLeague of Red Cross Societies
1963		League of Red Cross Societies	1919,Paris,France	Geneva	"for promoting the principles of theGeneva Convention and cooperation with theUN"[71] prize shared with theInternational Committee of the Red Cross
1969		International Labour Organization (ILO)	1919,Geneva	Geneva	"for creating international legislation insuringcertain norms for working conditions in every country"[72]
1981		Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)	1950,Geneva	Geneva	"for promoting the fundamental rights ofrefugees"[73]
1999		Doctors Without Borders	1971,Paris,France	Geneva	"in recognition of the organisation's pioneering humanitarian work on several continents"[74]
2007		Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)	1988,New York City,USA	Geneva	"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-madeclimate change, and to lay the foundations for themeasures that are needed to counteract such change"[75] prize shared withAl Gore
2017		International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)	2007,Australia	Geneva	"for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use ofnuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve atreaty-based prohibition of such weapons"[76]

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