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The Nobel Prize has been among the most prestigious international awards since 1901. Each year, awards are bestowed in chemistry, literature, physics, physiology or medicine, economics, and peace. In addition to the honor, prestige, and substantial prize money, the recipient also gets a gold medal with an image of Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896), who established the prize.

The Nobel Foundation has made a dataset available of all prize winners from the outset of the awards from 1901 to 2023. The dataset used in this project is from the Nobel Prize API and is available in the nobel.csv file in the data folder.

In this project, you'll get a chance to explore and answer several questions related to this prizewinning data. And we encourage you then to explore further questions that you're interested in!

Project Instructions

Analyze Nobel Prize winner data and identify patterns by answering the following questions:

  1. What is the most commonly awarded gender and birth country?
  • Store your answers as string variables top_gender and top_country.
  1. Which decade had the highest ratio of US-born Nobel Prize winners to total winners in all categories?
  • Store this as an integer called max_decade_usa.
  1. Which decade and Nobel Prize category combination had the highest proportion of female laureates?
  • Store this as a dictionary called max_female_dict where the decade is the key and the category is the value.There should only be one key:value pair.
  1. Who was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, and in what category?
  • Save your string answers as first_woman_name and first_woman_category.
  1. Which individuals or organizations have won more than one Nobel Prize throughout the years?
  • Store the full names in a list named repeat_list.
# Loading in required libraries
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import numpy as np

# Read in the Nobel Prize data
nobel = pd.read_csv('data/nobel.csv')

# Store and display the most commonly awarded gender and birth country in requested variables
top_gender = nobel['sex'].value_counts(sort = True).index[0]
top_country = nobel['birth_country'].value_counts(sort = True).index[0]

print("\nThe gender with the most Nobel laureates is :", top_gender)
print("The most common birth country of Nobel laureates is :", top_country)

# Calculate the proportion of USA born winners per decade
nobel['usa_born_winner'] = nobel['birth_country'] == 'United States of America'
nobel['decade'] = (np.floor(nobel['year']/ 10) * 10).astype(int)
prop_usa_winners = nobel.groupby('decade', as_index=False)['usa_born_winner'].mean()

# Identify the decade with the highest proportion of US-born winners
max_decade_usa = prop_usa_winners[prop_usa_winners['usa_born_winner'] == prop_usa_winners['usa_born_winner'].max()]['decade'].values[0]

# Optional: Plotting USA born winners
ax1 = sns.relplot(x='decade', y='usa_born_winner', data=prop_usa_winners, kind="line")

# Calculating the proportion of female laureates per decade
nobel['female_winner'] = nobel['sex'] == 'Female'
prop_female_winners = nobel.groupby(['decade', 'category'], as_index=False)['female_winner'].mean()

# Find the decade and category with the highest proportion of female laureates
max_female_decade_category = prop_female_winners[prop_female_winners['female_winner'] == prop_female_winners['female_winner'].max()][['decade', 'category']]

# Create a dictionary with the decade and category pair
max_female_dict = {max_female_decade_category['decade'].values[0]: max_female_decade_category['category'].values[0]}

# Optional: Plotting female winners with % winners on the y-axis
ax2 = sns.relplot(x='decade', y='female_winner', hue='category', data=prop_female_winners, kind="line")

# Finding the first woman to win a Nobel Prize
nobel_women = nobel[nobel['female_winner']]
min_row = nobel_women[nobel_women['year'] == nobel_women['year'].min()]
first_woman_name = min_row['full_name'].values[0]
first_woman_category = min_row['category'].values[0]
print(f"\nThe first woman to win a Nobel Prize was {first_woman_name}, in the category of {first_woman_category}.")

# Selecting the laureates that have received 2 or more prizes
counts = nobel['full_name'].value_counts()
repeats = counts[counts >= 2].index
repeat_list = list(repeats)

print("\nThe repeat winners are :", repeat_list)