In 2015, Times Higher Education (THE) published a top 10 list of the universities with the most Nobel prizewinners this century. Stanford University came first. Institutions in the United States held eight of the ten places.
What the list showed
The list covered prizes awarded from 2000 to 2014. Stanford scored 3.16, and seven Nobel laureates from the 21st century were associated with it. Harvard was not in the top 10 and placed 11th. Cambridge’s one prize this century was not enough to reach the top 10. Oxford did not appear because it had produced no winners in that period.
| Rank | Institution | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stanford University | US |
| 2 | Columbia University | US |
| 3 | University of California, Berkeley | US |
| 4 (tie) | Princeton University | US |
| 4 (tie) | University of Chicago | US |
| 6 | Howard Hughes Medical Institute | US |
| 7 | University of California, Santa Barbara | US |
| 8 (tie) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | US |
| 8 (tie) | Technion – Israel Institute of Technology | Israel |
| 10 | Max Planck Society | Germany |
How the scores worked
Each university was scored by the number of winners affiliated with it when the award was granted. The score was then weighted by the number of prizewinners in the category and the number of institutions linked to each winner. Literature and peace prizewinners were excluded, so the list covers only the scientific and economics prizes.
Why it mattered at the time
THE released the analysis ahead of its World Academic Summit at the University of Melbourne. The summit included a session on nurturing the next generation of Nobel prizewinners. The analysis also found that 71 of the 146 prizes awarded this century went to people affiliated with US universities. That is nearly half.
Technion and the Max Planck Society were the only two institutions outside the US in the top 10. Both had won prizes in chemistry.
What happened next
THE updated the table in later years. In 2016, Princeton overtook Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley to lead the list. In 2017, Princeton led for a second year, and Stanford stayed second.