juliensimon/physics-nobel-laureates

Physics Nobel Laureates

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Complete database of every Physics Nobel Prize laureate, sourced from Wikidata. The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded since 1901, recognizing landmark contributions to our understanding of the universe -- from the discovery of X-rays and quantum mechanics through nuclear physics, particle physics, semiconductors, lasers, and gravitational waves.

Each row represents one laureate and includes birth/death dates, sex, nationality, employer history (universities and research institutions), fields of work, and the cited work or discovery for which the prize was awarded. This enables historical analysis of Nobel Prize trends, gender and nationality diversity in physics, and institutional affiliation patterns.

Sourced from Wikidata's structured knowledge base (property P166=Q38104 for Nobel Prize in Physics), maintained by the Wikipedia/Wikidata community and updated as new laureates are announced each October.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
wikidata_id	str	Wikidata entity ID for the laureate (e.g. 'Q7240' for Max Planck); stable cross-reference key for linking to Wikipedia and other knowledge bases	Q35149	0.0%
name	string	Full legal name of the laureate as recorded in Wikidata	Wilhelm Röntgen	0.0%
birth_date	str	Date of birth in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD); null for historical figures with only a birth year known	1845-03-27	0.0%
death_date	str	Date of death in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD); null if laureate is still living	1923-02-10	30.6%
sex	string	Sex as recorded in Wikidata: 'male' or 'female'	male	0.0%
nationality	string	Nationality at time of award or primary nationality; may reflect citizenship changes	Kingdom of Prussia	0.0%
award_year	Int64	Year the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded (1901-present); up to 3 laureates may share a prize year	1901	0.0%
employers	string	Semicolon-separated list of known employers (universities, labs, research institutes) at time of award or career	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Münche...	0.0%
fields_of_work	string	Semicolon-separated physics subfields (e.g. 'quantum mechanics; atomic physics; condensed matter')	physics	1.3%
cited_work	string	Official Nobel Committee citation describing the discovery or contribution that earned the prize	såsom ett erkännande av den utomorden...	0.0%
birth_year	Int64	Year of birth derived from birth_date; used for age-at-award calculations	1845	0.0%

Quick stats

• 229 Physics Nobel Laureates from 36 nationalities
• 5 female laureates
• Awards by decade: 1900s (13), 1910s (10), 1920s (12), 1930s (11), 1940s (7), 1950s (19), 1960s (17), 1970s (25), 1980s (22), 1990s (22), 2000s (28), 2010s (26), 2020s (17)
• Top nationalities: United States (101), United Kingdom (23), Germany (16), France (14), Japan (9)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/physics-nobel-laureates", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/physics-nobel-laureates", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Laureates by nationality
print(df["nationality"].value_counts().head(10))

# Female laureates
female = df[df["sex"] == "female"]
print(female[["name", "award_year", "nationality"]])

# Awards by decade
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["decade"] = (df["award_year"] // 10 * 10).astype("Int64")
counts = df.groupby("decade").size()
plt.bar(counts.index.astype(int), counts.values)
plt.xlabel("Decade")
plt.ylabel("Number of Laureates")
plt.title("Physics Nobel Prizes by Decade")
plt.show()

Data source

https://www.wikidata.org/

Related datasets

• juliensimon/astronomer-database

• juliensimon/pdg-particle-properties

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{physics_nobel_laureates,
  title = {Physics Nobel Laureates},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/physics-nobel-laureates},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC0-1.0