- As of the end of 2020, there have been 24 Canadian winners of the Nobel Prize, including 3 who won the Memorial Prize in Economics
- Frederick Grant Banting was the first Canadian to win a Nobel Prize. At age 32, Frederick was the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine and remains so to this day.
- Alice Munro, the 82-year-old author from Wingham, Ontario was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, October 10, 2013; the 13th woman to win that Prize and the first “Canadian-based” writer to do so.
- Among the Canadian winners have been 4 Canadian Nobel Prize winners born elsewhere:
- Gerhart Herzberg (1904 – 1999), Canadian born in Germany, Chemistry, 1971
- John Polanyi, (1929 – ), Hungarian-Canadian born in Germany, Chemistry, 1986
- Michael Smith (1932 – 2000), Canadian born in the UK, Chemistry, 1993
- Jack. W. Szostak, (1952 – ), Canadian born in the UK, Physiology or Medicine, 2009
Canadian winners of the Nobel Prize
- Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941), Physiology or Medicine, 1923
- William Francis Giauque (1895 -1982), Chemistry, 1949
- Lester B. Pearson, (1897 – 1972), Peace, 1957
- Charles Brenton Huggins (1901 – 1997), Medicine, 1966
- Gerhart Herzberg (1904 – 1999) [b. Germany], Chemistry 1971
- Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005), Literature, 1976
- David H. Hubel (1926 – 2013), Physiology or Medicine, 1981
- Henry Taube (1915 – 2005), Chemistry, 1983
- John C. Polanyi (1929 – ) [b. Germany] Chemistry, 1986
- Sidney Altman (1939 – 2022), Chemistry, 1989
- Richard E. Taylor (1929 – 2018), Physics, 1990
- Rudolph A. Marcus (1923 – ) Chemistry, 1992
- Michael Smith (1932 – 2000) [b. UK] Chemistry, 1993
- Bertram N. Brockhouse (1918 – 2003), Physics, 1994
- William Vickrey (1914 -1996), Memorial Prize in Economics, 1996
- Myron S. Scholes (1941 – ), Memorial Prize in Economics, 1997
- Robert A. Mundell (1932 – 2021), Memorial Prize in Economics, 1999
- Jack W. Szostak (1952 – ) [b. UK] Physiology or Medicine, 2009
- Willard S. Boyle (1924 – 2011), Physics, 2009
- Ralph Steinman (1943 – 2011), Physiology or Medicine, 2011
- Alice Munro (1931 – ), Literature, 2013
- Arthur B. McDonald (1943 – ), Physics, 2015
- Donna Strickland (1979 – ), Physics, 2018
- James Peebles (1935 – ), Physics, 2019
- David Card (1956 – ), Economics, 2021
NOTES:
- Saul Bellow was born in Quebec, but became an American citizen in adulthood.
- Canada also won the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Nobel Prize winners from other countries – for work done in Canada
- Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937), a New Zealander, won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for work done previously at McGill University, Montreal, Canada
- John James Rickard Macleod, (1876 – 1935), a Scotsman, shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Banting for the discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto
- Michael Houghton, a British citizen, shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work done previously at the University of Alberta
Did You Know?
- Without the discovery of insulin in 1921, George Minot, American physician, a diabetic and winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for development of the first effective treatment for pernicious anemia likely would not have lived to make his discovery.
- Frederick Sanger, a British molecular biologist won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for determining the primary structure of insulin; the first protein to have its sequence determined.
- Dorothy Hodgkin, a British biochemist, won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of crystallography and went on to determine the spatial conformation of the insulin molecule by means of X-ray diffraction studies in 1969.
- Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, an American medical physicist, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the development of the radioimmunoassay for insulin in 1977.
- Since the Nobel Prize was founded in 1901, only 4 people have been ‘2-time’ winners: Frederick Sanger, Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen.