List of Asian Nobel laureates

The Nobel Prize is an annual, international prize first awarded in 1901 for achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. An associated prize in Economics has been awarded since 1969.^[1] Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 800 individuals.^[2]

Asians have been the recipients of all six award categories: Peace, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Chemistry and Economics. The first Asian recipient, Rabindranath Tagore, was awarded the Literature Prize in 1913. The most Nobel Prizes awarded to Asian in a single year was in 2014, when five Asians became laureates. The most recent, Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded his prizes in 2016.

To date, there have been sixty-eight Asian winners of the Nobel Prize, including twenty-five Japanese and twelve Israeli. The following are not including Russian.

Laureates

Year	Image	Laureate	Country at the time of the award	Category	Comment
1913		Rabindranath Tagore	India under  British Raj	Literature	First Asian and Indian Nobel laureate
1930		Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman	India under  British Raj	Physics	First Asian and Indian Nobel laureate in science
1949		Hideki Yukawa	Japan	Physics	First Japanese Nobel laureate
1957		Chen Ning Yang	China	Physics	First Chinese Nobel laureate
		Tsung-Dao Lee	China	Physics	First Chinese Nobel laureate
1965		Sin-Itiro Tomonaga	Japan	Physics
1966		Shmuel Yosef Agnon	Israel	Literature	First Israeli Nobel laureate
1968		Har Gobind Khorana	United States, from  India	Physiology or Medicine	First Asian born and Indian born Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine
		Yasunari Kawabata	Japan	Literature
1973		Leo Esaki	Japan	Physics
		Lê Đức Thọ (declined award)	North Vietnam	Peace	First Asian and Vietnamese Nobel laureate in Peace
1974		Eisaku Satō	Japan	Peace
1978		Menachem Begin	Israel	Peace
1979		Abdus Salam	Pakistan	Physics	First Pakistani Nobel laureate
		Mother Teresa	India	Peace	First Asian woman Nobel laureate
1981		Kenichi Fukui	Japan	Chemistry	First Asian and Japanese Nobel laureate in Chemistry
1983		Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar	United States, from  India	Physics
1986		Yuan T. Lee	Taiwan and  United States	Chemistry	First Taiwanese Nobel laureate
1987		Susumu Tonegawa	Japan	Physiology or Medicine	First Asian and Japanese Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine
1988		Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama	Tibet in Exile in  India	Peace	First Tibetan Nobel laureate
1991		Aung San Suu Kyi	Burma	Peace	First Myanmar Nobel laureate
1994		Kenzaburō Ōe	Japan	Literature
		Yasser Arafat	Palestine	Peace	First Palestinian Arab in Nobel laureate
		Shimon Peres	Israel	Peace
		Yitzhak Rabin	Israel	Peace
1996		Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo	Timor-Leste	Peace	First Timorese Nobel laureate
		José Ramos-Horta	Timor-Leste	Peace	First Timorese Nobel laureate
1998		Daniel C. Tsui	United States, from  China	Physics
		Amartya Sen	India	Economics	First Asian and Indian Nobel laureate in Economics
2000		Hideki Shirakawa	Japan	Chemistry
		Gao Xingjian	France, from  China	Literature
		Kim Dae-jung	South Korea	Peace	First Korean Nobel laureate
2001		Ryōji Noyori	Japan	Chemistry
2002		Masatoshi Koshiba	Japan	Physics
		Koichi Tanaka	Japan	Chemistry
		Daniel Kahneman	Israel and  United States	Economic
2003		Shirin Ebadi	Iran	Peace	First Iranian Nobel laureate
2004		Aaron Ciechanover	Israel	Chemistry
		Avram Hershko	Israel	Chemistry
2005		Robert Aumann	Israel and  United States	Economic
2006		Orhan Pamuk	Turkey	Literature	First Turkish Nobel laureate
		Muhammad Yunus	Bangladesh	Peace	First Bangladeshi Nobel laureate
2008		Yoichiro Nambu	United States, from  Japan	Physics
		Makoto Kobayashi	Japan	Physics
		Toshihide Maskawa	Japan	Physics
		Osamu Shimomura	Japan	Chemistry
2009		Charles K. Kao	United Kingdom and  United States, from  China	Physics	First Hong Kong citizenship Nobel laureate
		Venkatraman Ramakrishnan	United Kingdom and  United States , from  India	Chemistry
		Ada Yonath	Israel	Chemistry
2010		Ei-ichi Negishi	Japan	Chemistry
		Akira Suzuki	Japan	Chemistry
		Liu Xiaobo	China	Peace	First Asian Nobel laureate in prison
2011		Dan Shechtman	Israel	Chemistry
		Tawakkul Karman	Yemen	Peace	First Arab Woman and First Yemeni Nobel laureate
2012		Shinya Yamanaka	Japan	Physiology or Medicine
		Mo Yan	China	Literature
2013		Arieh Warshel	Israel and  United States	Chemistry
		Michael Levitt	Israel,  United Kingdom and  United States	Chemistry
2014		Isamu Akasaki	Japan	Physics
		Hiroshi Amano	Japan	Physics
		Shuji Nakamura	United States, from  Japan	Physics
		Kailash Satyarthi	India	Peace	First Indian Nobel laureate in Peace
		Malala Yousafzai	Pakistan	Peace	First Pakistani Woman Nobel laureate and youngest Nobel laureate
2015		Satoshi Ōmura	Japan	Physiology or Medicine
		Tu Youyou	China	Physiology or Medicine	First Chinese woman Nobel laureate
		Takaaki Kajita	Japan	Physics
		Aziz Sancar	Turkey and  United States	Chemistry	First Turkish Nobel laureate in science
2016		Yoshinori Ohsumi	Japan	Physiology or Medicine

Non-Asian born Laureates of Asian descent

Non-Asian Laureates born in Asia

References

1. "Nobel Prize" (2007), in Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed 14 November 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online:

   An additional award, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden and was first awarded in 1969

2. "All Nobel Laureates". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2010-03-01.