screenshot of data chart from X attributed to The Market Mind
According to this data, it puts into perspective which country has had the most nobel prize and that represents significant breakthroughs mostly in science and technology but of course a lot of other fields or industries. It's obvious America took the lead.
And the number of nobel prize, in my own opinion which is highly subjective is a reflection of how long a particular nation dominated in advancements in the world
At first glance of the chart, the American number of 428 does seem kind of crazy. But take a good look at Sweden, the nation has won 34 nobel prizes with ten million people so this argument against population quickly falls apart.
Money and quality universities are very important in this situation as well. That being said some countries made a choice thousands of years ago that odd types of thinking would not be looked upon negatively and this decision has held true for a majority of those countries.
Take these countries for example, Germany, Britain and France, they have been doing this type of thinking for many centuries, so much so it's become second nature. If someone comes out with an outlandish concept about protein in a research lab, an available system has already been established to nurture this type of idea for it to become a true breakthrough. Japan is a perfect example of this, having rebuilt after WWII, and to this day, they hold at least 33 prizes.
Israel has 14 out of a very small amount of land. Hungary has 10 and in fact half of those people left the country decades ago.
I believe the rest of the world category minimizes the unique experiences of each nation. To look at 119 prizes collectively among what is probably around 60 nations with extremely different cultures is unfair. For example, Canada having 29 nobel prizes holds higher than Russia, depending on how we score the countries.
We all know what types of policies support development. The Long term funding and especially academic independence. The question then becomes why do some countries always continue those policies or keep the same ones while others have never had them from the beginning? Most likely politics and history have a lot to do with it but very few people in a Nobel article would even imply that.
Peace prizes are not the same as physics prizes and literature is subjectively judged in a way that chemistry cannot be judged the same way. So to combine them together into one score would be sloppy but that's still what we do.
In 1910, the USA was not the dominant force that it is today. Things have changed drastically and we can expect this to continue as the world's demographics change and the world will be very different in the future.
