List of Canadians who have won the Nobel Prize

Toronto-born writer Anne Carson is the latest Canadian to be awarded a Nobel Prize. The celebrated poet, essayist and translater earned the literature prize Thursday for “bold and inventive” works. 

Here is a list of Canadians who have been recognized over the years with a Nobel.

1923: Frederick G. Banting, Nobel Prize in medicine for the “discovery of insulin.”

1949: William F. Giauque, Nobel Prize in chemistry for “contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures.”

1957: Former prime minister Lester Bowles Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize for his role in defusing the 1956 Suez crisis.

1966: Charles B. Huggins, Nobel Prize in medicine for “his discoveries concerning hormonal treatment of prostatic cancer.”

1971: Gerhard Herzberg, Nobel Prize in chemistry for “his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals.”

1976: Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize in literature for “the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.”

1981: David H. Hubel, Nobel Prize in medicine for “discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system.”

1983: Henry Taube, Nobel Prize in chemistry for “his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes.”

1986: John Polanyi, Nobel Prize in chemistry for “contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.

1989: Sidney Altman, Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovery of catalytic properties of RNA.

1990: Richard E. Taylor, Nobel Prize in physics for “investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.”

1992: Rudolph A. Marcus, Nobel Prize in chemistry for “his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems.”

1993: Michael Smith, Nobel Prize in chemistry for “his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies.”

1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, Nobel Prize in physics for “the development of neutron spectroscopy.”

1996: William Vickrey, Nobel Prize in economic sciences for “contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information.”

1997: Myron S. Scholes, Nobel Prize in economic sciences for “a new method to determine the value of derivatives.”

1999: Robert A. Mundell, Nobel Prize in economic sciences for “his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas.”

2009: Jack W. Szostak, Nobel Prize in medicine for “the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”

2009: Willard S. Boyle, Nobel Prize in physics for “the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit _ the CCD sensor.

2011: Ralph M. Steinman, Nobel Prize in medicine for “his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.”

2013: Alice Munro, Nobel Prize in literature for being the “master of the contemporary short story.”

2015: Arthur B. McDonald, Nobel Prize in physics for “the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass.”

2018: Donna Strickland, Nobel Prize in physics for co-developing a “method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”

2019: James Peebles, Nobel Prize in physics for physical cosmology, for laying out the chemical makeup of the universe at its beginning and later explaining the way that galaxies are formed.

2021: David Card shared the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for pioneering research on labour-market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education. 

2024: Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI,” shared the Nobel Prize in physics for work that laid the foundation for machine learning and neural networks.

2025: Peter Howitt, shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

2026: Anne Carson, Nobel Prize in literature, for her “bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2026.