Israeli Nobel laureates: Making the world a better place, from the Land of Milk and Honey

There’s no doubt, winning the Nobel prize in every category is a huge honor both for the winner and for the country the winner is from. The State of Israel, with thousands of years of history but only with 70 years of new independence has been surprising the entire world with its approach to innovation, survivor mindset and advanced technology in every single industry.

We’re going to take this opportunity to give you a list of the Israelis who have been awarded the most important prize in our intellectual world: The Nobel Prize. The changes these Israelis offered go way beyond the innovations Ben Yehuda applied when bringing Hebrew back to life. These innovations can actually make our lives better. Literally.

If you are planning on receiving the Nobel Prize anytime soon, take a close look at this list of Israelis who already did. More than just one of them can serve as an immense source of inspiration.

Israelis who have won the Nobel Prize: Divided by category

The Nobel prize has lots of different categories, and Israelis have been won in a wide variety of them. We have not only scientists (but we do have some very talented ones). These are the ones who fulfilled our hearts with pride.

The Israeli who won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, and if you are looking for a good book to start practicing all of the Hebrew you will learn in our live online Hebrew courses, his published material might be a great place to start!

Peace: The main goal and the main focus for Israelis

This category has always been a bit controversial. Anyhow, 3 Israelis have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. All three of them used to be politicians and did an outstanding job trying to achieve peace for Israel and its neighbors.

The Israeli winners of the Nobel Peace Prize were Menachem Begin, for being in charge of the peace process between Israel and Egypt; and Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for their permanent effort to achieve long lasting peace in the Middle East.

Economics: Israel as one of the strongest economies in the world

Israel has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics twice. The first time was in 2002 when Daniel Kahneman integrated psychological analysis to better understand economic strategy and processes.

Then, following a similar path, Robert Aumann was awarded this same Nobel prize for having enhanced our understanding of cooperation and conflict through the “game-theory” analysis.

Chemistry: Israel’s Kingdom in the Nobel Prizes

God bless Chemistry! Israelis have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 6 times (so far), and we cannot wait to see who in Israel is going to win it next. A few weeks ago, we mentioned one of these outstanding people in an article about Israeli women who have changed the world. So be ready to see a familiar name as part of this list.

In 2004, Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover were the laureates. Then, in the year 2009 it was the spectacular Ada Yonath who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her study of the structure and function of the ribosome.

In 2011, the amazing Dan Shechtman discovered quasicrystals and was the laureate of the year in this category. And then, in 2013, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel honored an entire country when once again, they brought the Nobel Prize in Chemistry back to Israel.

Learn Hebrew to get more inspiration: You could meet a Nobel Prize laureate

Israel is a small country; you could easily meet some of the personalities on this list in the supermarket or in the coffee shop nearby. When learning Hebrew in one of our live online courses, you increase your possibilities to have an interesting talk with them.

Also, if you want to know what some of their first names mean, we invite you to take a look at this article we published a few weeks ago, where we explain the meaning of some Hebrew names.