Lab / 04

Born here, won there

Every Nobel laureate has two places attached: where they were born and where they were working when the prize came. Draw a line between the two and you get a map of where talent grows and where it ends up. South Africa grows plenty of it. Its scientists mostly did their prize-winning work somewhere else.

Five Peace Prizes, one country

South Africa's science laureates left. Its Peace laureates are the opposite story: the prize came to South Africa because of what happened in South Africa. Five South Africans have won it - more than any other country in Africa. Four came out of the fight against apartheid. The fifth, in 2026, came out of the courtroom.

  1. 1960
    Albert Luthuli

    President-General of the ANC. The 1960 prize was handed over in December 1961, while he was banned and confined to Groutville.

  2. 1984
    Desmond Tutu

    Honoured as a unifying figure in the non-violent campaign against apartheid, in the middle of the township uprisings.

  3. 1993
    Nelson Mandela

    Shared with de Klerk for the work of ending apartheid peacefully and laying the ground for a democratic South Africa.

  4. 1993
    F. W. de Klerk

    The last apartheid-era president, who unbanned the liberation movements in 1990 and released Mandela.

  5. 2026
    Navi Pillay

    Born in Durban in 1941. Started out defending anti-apartheid activists, went on to lead the UN tribunal for the Rwandan genocide and serve as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Honoured for making sure war crimes and genocide are prosecuted. The first South African woman to win the Peace Prize.

More at SAHO: Nobel Prizes and South African laureates

How it is counted

One row per prize, not per person, so Marie Curie counts twice. Organisations are left out because they were not born anywhere. Countries use today's borders: someone born in Breslau in 1900 counts as born in Poland.

"Working in" is the first affiliation the Nobel Foundation lists for the prize. Peace and Literature laureates usually have none, so the arcs are mostly science and economics.

Try this

Switch to Denmark. Click the USA on the map and watch the gold lines arrive from everywhere. Then pick Everyone and find the thickest arc on the map.

Data: the official Nobel Prize API, refreshed daily. Map: Natural Earth 1:110m (public domain). Source on GitHub