Indian city Calcutta becomes world’s No.1 to produce Nobel winners, Congratulations

Kolkata has often been regarded as the ‘cultural capital of India’. It is worth mentioning here that Kolkata carries a famous record of producing Nobel laureates.

Kolkata, in fact, has a strong connection with the Nobel Prize, with at least 5 Prize winners having links- either by birth or work with the Indian city.

The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards conferred in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in acknowledgement of academic, cultural, or scientific advances.

The Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, medal, and cash award. The Nobel Foundation decides on the ‘cash prize’ each year awarded to each Nobel laureate.

The cash prize is 9 million kronor ($917,000). In 2018, it was 8 million SEK (about US$1.1 million or €1.16 million).

Six Nobel Prize winners have been associated with Kolkata:

  • Sir Ronald Ross (1857—1932) — Medicine, 1902.
  • Rabindranath Tagore (1861—1941) — Literature, 1913; first Asian to win the Nobel Prize.
  • C V Raman (1888—1970) — Physics, 1930.
  • Mother Teresa (1910—1997) — Peace, 1979.
  • Amartya Sen (b. 1933) — Economics, 1998.
  • Abhijit Banerjee (b. 1961) – Economics, 2019.