Nobel Prize Winners

Have you ever heard of the Nobel Prize? It's basically like the Oscars of the science and literature world, and it's a pretty big deal. Like, we're talking the MOST prestigious award out there for people who've made major contributions to Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economics. It was created way back in 1895 by Alfred Nobel, who was a Swedish genius inventor/entrepreneur.

So, who are some of the big names who've won this thing? Well, there's Marie Curie, who basically discovered radioactivity and won TWO Nobel Prizes (no big deal). And then there's Albert Einstein, who you might have heard of, who came up with the whole theory of relativity thing and revolutionized our understanding of the universe. Plus, there's Nelson Mandela, who won the Peace Prize for his amazing work in fighting apartheid in South Africa, and Malala Yousafzai, who's been fighting for girls' education and women's rights since she was a kid. Basically, these people are total game-changers and have made the world a better place through their groundbreaking work.

I recently stumbled upon Tanya Shapiro's amazing work on the Nobel Prize winners, and I gotta say, I was really impressed. And guess what? There's an API on nobelprize.org that lets you pull data, so of course, I had to check it out. I've got all the code and clean data up on my Github if you're interested.

But here's the thing - as I was exploring the data, I noticed that there's a serious lack of women among the laureates. Like, seriously. So, I decided to whip up some sweet graphs using Flourish Studio and show you just how bad it is.

So get this - the Nobel Prize has been around since 1901, and only four women have EVER won the Physics prize. Like, what kind of crazy imbalance is that? And don't even get me started on Chemistry - they've had a whopping eight women laureates. And Medicine or Physiology isn't much better, with only 12 women taking home the prize.

Economics only started giving out Nobel Prizes in 1969, and in all that time, they've only had TWO women winners: Elinor Ostrom in 2009, and Esther Duflo.

I mean, come on, guys, it's 2023 - we can do better than this!

Out of all the Nobel Prizes awarded, only 6% have gone to women. That's a measly 61 out of almost 1000 total prizes. And get this - half of those 61 prizes have only been awarded since 2000. So basically, women have been getting the short end of the stick for way too long. Meanwhile, men have won a whopping 898 Nobel Prizes. Like, seriously? Come on, Nobel committee, we need some better representation up in here!

I've made some donut charts to show you just how bad the gender representation is across all categories of the Nobel Prize.

Oh, and by the way, all the plots I made are totally interactive. So if you're feeling curious and want to explore more, just go ahead and navigate or click around - I've got all sorts of extra info for you to discover. Trust me, you're not gonna want to miss out on all the juicy details!

And last but not least, I made this cool card for ALL the Nobel Prize winners, grouped by year. I mean, these are some seriously brilliant minds we're talking about here, so it's definitely worth exploring. Plus, you can filter them by year and category, so you can really dive into the specifics. So go ahead, enjoy, and have some fun exploring!