List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Cornell University

As of October 2020, 61 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with Cornell University. The building pictured is Goldwin Smith Hall.

This list of Nobel laureates affiliated with Cornell University comprehensively shows the alumni, faculty members as well as researchers of Cornell University who were awarded the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine.^[1] They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. Another prize, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for contributors to the field of economics.^[2]

As of October 2020, 61 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cornell University as alumni, faculty members and researchers, and 50 of them are officially listed as "Cornell's Nobel Laureates" by the university.^[3] Among the 61 laureates, 18 are Cornell alumni (graduate and attendees), 19 are long-term faculty members and 28 are researchers (four overlaps).^[4] Subject-wise, the Nobel Prize categories of Physics and Physiology or Medicine account for 23 and 15 awards to Cornell-affiliated laureates, respectively.

Inclusion criteria[]

Cornell University

The university affiliations in this list are all official academic affiliations such as degree programs and official academic employment. Non-academic affiliations such as advisory committee and administrative staff are generally excluded. The official academic affiliations fall into three categories: 1) Alumni (graduates and attendees), 2) Long-term Academic Staff, and 3) Short-term Academic Staff. Graduates are defined as those who hold Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorate, or equivalent degrees from Cornell, while attendees are those who formally enrolled in a degree program at Cornell but did not complete the program; thus, honorary degrees, posthumous degrees, summer attendees, exchange students, and auditing students are excluded. The category of "Long-term Academic Staff" consists of tenure/tenure-track and equivalent academic positions, while that of "Short-term Academic Staff" consists of lecturers (without tenure), postdoctoral researchers (postdocs), visiting professors/scholars (visitors), and equivalent academic positions. At Cornell, the specific academic title solely determines the type of affiliation, regardless of the actual time the position was held by a laureate.

Further explanations on "visitors" under "Short-term Academic Staff" are presented as follows. 1) All informal or personal visits are excluded from the list; 2) all employment-based visiting positions, which carry teaching/research duties, are included as affiliations in the list; 3) as for award/honor-based visiting positions, to minimize controversy this list takes a conservative view and includes the positions as affiliations only if the laureates were required to assume employment-level duty (teaching/research) or the laureates specifically classified the visiting positions as "affiliation" or similar in reliable sources such as their curriculum vita. To be specific, some award/honor-based visiting positions such as the "Baker Lectureship" at Cornell University are awards/honors without employment-level duty.^[5] In particular, attending meetings and giving public lectures, talks or non-curricular seminars at Cornell University is not a form of employment-level duty. Finally, summer visitors are generally excluded from the list unless summer work yielded significant end products such as research publications and components of Nobel-winning work, since summer terms are not part of formal academic years.

The "A.D White Professorship-at-Large (A.D.W Professor)" at Cornell University is an academic appointment which has a definite duration of appointment (six years).^[6] This is similar to adjunct professorship instead of usual visiting professorship (note that the University Count considers the A.D White Professors as full-time academic staff).

Summary[]

All types of affiliations, namely alumni, long-term and short-term academic staff, count equally in the following table and throughout the whole page.^[a]

In the following list, the number following a person's name is the year they received the prize; in particular, a number with asterisk (*) means the person received the award while they were working at Yale University (including emeritus staff).^[b] A name underlined implies that this person has already been listed in a previous category (i.e., multiple affiliations).

Nobel laureates by category[]

Nobel Prize in Physics[]

No.	Laureate	Image	Year	Relation	Rationale
1	George Paget Thomson		1937	Non–Resident Lecturer, 1929-1930	"for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals"
2	Isidor Isaac Rabi		1944	B.Chem. 1919 Graduate study 1921–23 (transferred)	"for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei"[9]
3	Richard Feynman		1965	Professor of Physics, 1945-1950	"their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles"
4	Hans Bethe		1967	Professor of Physics, 1935-2005	"for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars"[10]
5	Hannes Alfvén		1970	Distinguished Professor in Engineering	"for fundamental work and discoveries in magnetohydro-dynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics"[11]
6	John Robert Schrieffer		1972	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1969–1975	"for [his] jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory".[12]
7	Brian David Josephson Co-recipient with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever		1973	NSF Fellow, 1971–1972[13]	"for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" and the other half to Brian David Josephson "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects"[14]
8	Sheldon Glashow Co-recipient with Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg		1979	B.A., 1954	"for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current"[15]
9	Steven Weinberg Co-recipient with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow		1979	B.A. 1954	"for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current"[15]
10	Kenneth G. Wilson		1982	Professor of Physics, 1963-1988	"for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions"[16]
11	Pierre-Gilles de Gennes		1991	Served on the Cornell faculty as A.D. White Professor-at-Large 1977–1983 and Bethe Lecturer in Physics 1989–1990	"for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers"[17]
12	Russell Alan Hulse Co-recipient with Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.		1993	Scholar at Arecibo Observatory of Cornell University in Puerto Rico 1974[18]	"for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation"[19]
13	David Morris Lee Co-recipient with Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson		1996	Professor of Physics, 1959–2009	"for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3"[20]
14	Douglas D. Osheroff Co-recipient with David M. Lee and Robert C. Richardson		1996	M.S. 1971 - Physics Ph.D. 1973 – Physics	"for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3"[20]
15	Robert Coleman Richardson Co-recipient with Douglas D. Osheroff and David M. Lee		1996	Research Associate, 1966–1967 Professor of Physics, 1968–2013	"for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3"[20]
16	Carl Wieman		2001	A.D White Professor[21]
17	Anthony James Leggett		2002	Visiting Professor, 04/1973, 07/1974 Bethe Lecturer, 04/1980 Visiting Scientist, 01/1983–08/1983[22]	"for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids"
18	François Englert Co-recipient with Peter Higgs		2013	Research associate and assistant professor 1959-1961	"for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle"[23]
19	David J. Thouless Co-recipient with Duncan Haldane and John M. Kosterlitz		2016	Ph.D. 1958	"for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter"[24]
20	John M. Kosterlitz Co-recipient with Duncan Haldane and David J. Thouless		2016	Postdoctoral researcher 1973-1974	"for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter"[25]
21	Kip Stephen Thorne Co-recipient with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish		2017	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1986–1992 Visiting Senior Research Associate, 01/1977 – 06/1977 Hans Bethe Lecturer 1986 Yervant Terzian Memorial Lecture, 2016[26]	"for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves"[27][28]
22	Arthur Ashkin		2018	Ph.D. 1952 [29]	"for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics" “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems”[30][31]
23	Roger Penrose		2020	Visiting Researcher (1968-69)[32][33]	"for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity."[34]

Nobel Prize in Chemistry[]

No.	Laureate	Image	Year	Relation	Rationale
1	Peter Debye		1936	Professor of Chemistry, 1940-1952	"for his contributions to the study of molecular structure," primarily referring to his work on dipole moments and X-ray diffraction
2	Otto Hahn		1944	George Fisher Baker Non-Resident Lecturer in Chemistry 1933[35]	"for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei."
3	James B. Sumner		1946	Professor of Biochemistry/Nutrition 1929–1955; took emeritus status in 1955
4	Vincent du Vigneaud		1955	Professor, Cornell Medical College 1938–1967 Professor Emeritus, Ithaca campus 1967–1974	"for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone"
5	Manfred Eigen		1967	A.D. White Professor-at-Large
6	Paul Flory		1974	Chemistry faculty, 1948–1957	"for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of the macromolecules"[36]
7	Roald Hoffmann Co-recipient with Kenichi Fukui		1981	Professor of Chemistry, 1965–Present	"for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions"[37]
8	Henry Taube		1983	Instructor and Assistant Professor(1941-1946)	"for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes."[38]
9	Richard R. Ernst		1991	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1998	"for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy"[39]
10	Eric Betzig		2014	M.S. 1985, Ph.D. 1988 - Applied and Engineering Physics	"for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy"[40]
11	William E. Moerner		2014	M.S. 1978, Ph.D. 1982 - Physics	"for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy"[41]
12	Joachim Frank Co-recipient with Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson		2017	Postdoctoral researcher 1972[42][43][44]	"for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution"[45]

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine[]

No.	Laureate	Image	Year	Relation	Rationale
1	Herbert Spencer Gasser		1944	Cornell Medical College faculty 1931–1934
2	Hermann Joseph Muller		1946	Cornell graduate student 1911–1912
3	Fritz Albert Lipmann		1953	Research Associate, Cornell Medical College 1939–1941	"for his discovery of co-enzyme A and its importance for intermediary metabolism"
4	George Beadle		1958	PhD
5	Peter Medawar		1960	A.D. White Professor[46]
6	Haldan Keffer Hartline		1967	Associate Professor of Physiology, Cornell Medical College 1940–1941
7	Robert W. Holley Co-recipient with H. Gobind Khorana and Marshall W. Nirenberg		1968	Ph.D., 1946 Professor of Organic Chemistry, 1948–1966	"for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis"[47]
8	Har Gobind Khorana		1968	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1974–1980
9	Barbara McClintock		1983	B.S., 1923 M.A., 1925 Ph.D., 1927 Instructor in botany, 1927–1931 Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large, 1965–1974	"for her discovery of mobile genetic elements"[48]
10	Harold Varmus		1989	Professor of Medicine, 2015-Present	"for [his] discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes"
11	Robert F. Furchgott		1998	Research Associate (Medicine)/Instructor (Physiology and Biophysics/Assistant Professor Medicine), 1941–1949	"for [his] discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system"[49]
12	Paul Greengard		2000	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1981–1987	"for [his] discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system"[50]
13	Jack W. Szostak Co-recipient with Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Carol W. Greider		2009	Ph.D. 1977 - Biochemistry	"for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"[51]
14	James P. Allison		2018	Professor of Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, 2004–2012	"for discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation"
15	Charles M. Rice		2020	Adjunct Professor

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics[]

No.	Laureate	Image	Year	Relation	Rationale
1	Robert Fogel		1993	B.A., 1948	"for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change"[52]
2	Amartya Sen		1998	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1978–1984	"for his contributions to welfare economics"[53]
3	Robert F. Engle		2003	M.S., 1966, Ph.D., 1969	"for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)"[54]
4	Dale Mortensen		2010	Visiting Professor of Economics (Fall 1984)[55]
5	Richard Thaler		2017	Professor of Economics and the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, 1978–1995[56][57][58][59]	"for his contributions to behavioural economics"[60]

Nobel Prize in Literature[]

No.	Laureate	Image	Year	Relation	Rationale
1	Pearl S. Buck		1938	M.A., 1925	"for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces"[61]
2	Wole Soyinka		1986	Senior Fellow, Society for the Humanities, 1985 Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts, 1988-1991[62][63]	"who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence"[64]
3	Octavio Paz		1990	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1972-1974	"for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity"[65]
4	Toni Morrison		1993	M.A. 1955 - English A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1997–2003	"who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality"[66]

Nobel Peace Prize[]

No	Laureate	Image	Year	Relation	Rationale
1	John Mott Co-recipient with Emily Greene Balch		1946	B.S. 1888 - Philosophy	"Chairman, International Missionary Council; President, World Alliance of Young Men's Christian Associations"[67]
2	Norman Borlaug		1970	A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1982–1988

See also[]

• List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation
• List of Cornell University alumni
• List of Cornell University faculty

Notes[]

References[]

External links[]

• Official website of Cornell University
• Official website of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• Official website of the Nobel Foundation