• 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:
    1. Gerhart Herzberg (1904 – 1999), Canadian born in Germany, Chemistry, 1971
    2. John Polanyi, (1929 – ), Hungarian-Canadian born in Germany, Chemistry, 1986
    3. Michael Smith (1932 – 2000), Canadian born in the UK, Chemistry, 1993
    4. Jack. W. Szostak, (1952 – ), Canadian born in the UK, Physiology or Medicine, 2009

Canadian winners of the Nobel Prize

  1. Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941), Physiology or Medicine, 1923
  2. William Francis Giauque (1895 -1982), Chemistry, 1949
  3. Lester B. Pearson, (1897 – 1972), Peace, 1957
  4. Charles Brenton Huggins (1901 – 1997), Medicine, 1966
  5. Gerhart Herzberg (1904 – 1999)  [b. Germany], Chemistry 1971
  6. Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005), Literature, 1976
  7. David H. Hubel (1926 – 2013), Physiology or Medicine, 1981
  8. Henry Taube (1915 – 2005), Chemistry, 1983
  9. John C. Polanyi (1929 –      )  [b. Germany] Chemistry, 1986
  10. Sidney Altman (1939 –  2022), Chemistry, 1989
  11. Richard E. Taylor (1929 – 2018), Physics, 1990
  12. Rudolph A. Marcus (1923 –      ) Chemistry, 1992
  13. Michael Smith (1932 – 2000)  [b. UK] Chemistry, 1993
  14. Bertram N. Brockhouse (1918 – 2003), Physics, 1994
  15. William Vickrey (1914 -1996), Memorial Prize in Economics, 1996
  16. Myron S. Scholes (1941 –     ), Memorial Prize in Economics, 1997
  17. Robert A. Mundell (1932 – 2021), Memorial Prize in Economics, 1999
  18. Jack W. Szostak (1952 –     ) [b. UK] Physiology or Medicine, 2009
  19. Willard S. Boyle (1924 – 2011), Physics, 2009
  20. Ralph Steinman (1943 – 2011), Physiology or Medicine, 2011
  21. Alice Munro (1931 –     ), Literature, 2013
  22. Arthur B. McDonald (1943 –     ), Physics, 2015
  23. Donna Strickland (1979 –     ), Physics, 2018
  24. James Peebles (1935 –     ), Physics, 2019
  25. 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

  1. Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937), a New Zealander, won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for work done previously at McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  2. 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
  3. 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.