Universities with Most Nobelists |
|
October 7, 2014, Volume 61, No. 08 |
Since 1901 when the Nobel Foundation began bestowing the awards, Penn has been affiliated with nearly 30 winners including alumni, researchers and faculty; it was recently included on a list of the “50 Universities with the Most Nobel Prize Winners” in a world-wide collection at number 21; see http://www.bestmastersprograms.org/50-universities-with-the-most-nobel-prize-winners/
The Nobelist with the longest Penn-affiliation was Dr. Klein who was on Penn’s faculty from 1958 until his retirement in 1991. He continued as an active researcher and valued colleague for years. In 1980, Dr. Klein won the Nobel Prize (Almanac October 21, 1980) for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies. His citation states that “few, if any, research workers in the empirical field of economic science have had so many successors and such a large impact as Lawrence Klein.” For a detailed profile see www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1980/klein-bio.html
In 2000, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded jointly to three people with Penn ties—Alan J. Heeger, from Penn’s physics faculty and the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, 1962-1982; Alan G. MacDiarmid, who joined the faculty in 1955 and was the Blanchard Professor of Chemistry until his death in 2007 (Almanac February 13, 2007); and Hideki Shirakawa, a postdoctoral research associate at Penn, 1976-1977 “for the discovery and development of conductive polymers.” They are among the six honorees from Penn’s chemistry department.
Nobel-winning Egyptian chemist and “father of femtochemistry” Ahmed H. Zewail, who won his prize in 1999, earned his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 (Almanac October 19, 1999).
Several Physiology or Medicine winners are Penn alumni: Gerald M. Edelman (1972) earned his MD at Penn in 1954; Michael S. Brown (1985) earned his BA in chemistry in 1962 and his MD in 1966 (Almanac October 22, 1985); and Stanley B. Prusiner (1997) D’64, M’68 (Almanac October 7, 1997) .
For a list of Penn’s Nobel Prize winners see: http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/notables/awards/nobel.html
Related: Honoring Lawrence Klein’s Legacy; Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate: Physicist Charles Kane
|