Thinking Citizen Blog — The Five US High Schools with the Most Nobel Prize Winners

Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day

Today’s Topic — The Five US High Schools with the Most Nobel Prize Winners Four of the five are public schools from New York City. All the winners from these schools (judging by their last names) are Jewish. The one private school (tied for second place at 5 prizes) is Philips Andover. The top-ranked school is Bronx Science, which, internationally is tied with the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, a French public school, with 8 prizes each — although it is worth noting that while 3 of the French school’s awards were in the sciences, 8 of the 8 awards for Bronx science were in either physics (7) or chemistry (1). I was not able to find out if there is a German high school with a comparable or higher number of winners. For some inexplicable reason the Wikipedia list of Nobel Laureates by secondary school affiliation does not include German laureates! Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.

BRONX SCIENCE — Bronx, NYC — 8

1. Leon Cooper, physics, 1972, Sheldon Glashow, physics, 1979, Steven Weinberg, physics, 1979.

2. Melvin Schwartz, physics, 1988, Russell Hulse, physics, 1993.

3. H. David Politzer, physics, 2004, Roy Glauber, physics, 2005 Robert Lefkowitz, chemistry, 2012.

JAMES MADISON HIGH SCHOOL — Brooklyn, NY — 5

1. Stanley Cohen, medicine, 1986, Robert Solow, economics, 1987.

2. Marin Perl, physics, 1985, Gary Becker, economics, 1992.

3. Arthur Ashkin, physics, 2018.

PHILIPS ANDOVER — Andover, Massachusetts — 5

1. George Whipple, medicine, 1933, William Vikrey, economics, 1996

2. William Knowles, chemistry, 2001, George Smith, chemistry, 2018

3. William Nordhaus, economics, 2018.

FOOTNOTE — Nobel Laureates by University Affiliation (see fourth link)

Warning: definitions of “affiliation” vary.

1. Harvard — 165, Cambridge — 121, UC Berkeley 114

2. University of Chicago — 101, Columbia — 100, MIT — 99

3. Stanford — 85, California Institute of Technology — 78, Princeton — 74

NB: Oxford — 72, Yale — 65, Cornell — 61

List of Nobel laureates by secondary school affiliation

Which Schools Have the Most Nobel Prizes? (with pictures)

List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation | Wikiwand

New York Jews won’t stop winning Nobel Prizes

A LINK TO THE LAST THREE YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:

PDF with headlines — Google Drive

YOUR TURN

Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.

This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.