Nobel Prizes in the Czech Republic: Who Holds Them and Who Might Join the Ranks?

Nobel Prizes for the Czech Republic

The poet Jaroslav Seifert was nominated six times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, finally winning it on his seventh try in 1984. Karel Čapek had less fortune, as he was nominated seven times but never won. Other notable figures who were positioned to win include Jaroslav Vrchlický (nominated eight times), Josef Svatopluk Machar (nominated in 1914 and 1915), Vladimír Holan, Milan Kundera, Arnošt Lustig, and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, a writer originally from Zdislavice near Kroměříž. Even Alois Jirásek, who was nominated five times, or the nine-time nominee Otokar Březina didn’t win, and he explicitly stated he did not want his name associated with “such things.” Nevertheless, the Nobel Prize is still the most prestigious literary award, with winners including Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905), Romain Rolland (1915), Thomas Mann (1929), William Faulkner (1949), Ernest Hemingway (1954), Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1970), Gabriel García Márquez (1982), and Bob Dylan (2016).

The Czech path to a prestigious award: a pacifist, a doctor, and a physician

Since 1901, Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel has annually awarded prizes honoring remarkable achievements in five fields: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, peace, and literature. The Czech Republic has connections to many characters who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, although many of them spoke German as their first language. Among them was Berta von Suttner (1843-1914), a native of Prague, who became the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.

Another Nobel Prize went to a woman from the Czech lands in 1947: Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori, both born in 1896 in Prague. Gerty was from Petra district, while Carl was from New Town. They both studied medicine in Prague before moving to the United States in 1922, where they researched the chemical nature and function of hormones. Gerty Cori became the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in the exact sciences, following Maria Sklodowska-Curie and her daughter Irena.

History of Czech achievements and Nobel Prize winners

The first-ever Nobel Prize winner of Czech nationality was Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890-1967), a physical chemist known for discovering and founding polarography. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1959, and his contributions are honored at the Exposition of the History of Charles University in Prague. The fourth Nobel Prize went to the poet Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986) for literature, while the fifth went to physicist Peter Grünberg (1939-2018), who was born in Pilsen. He lived in Germany and received the Nobel Prize in 2007 alongside French scientist Albert Fert for their discovery of giant magnetoresistance (GMR). This discovery is regarded as a significant advancement in modern information technology. It allowed for a considerable increase in storage capacity for computer hard drives while making storage devices smaller.

Several notable individuals came close to receiving this esteemed award, like Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, Edvard Benes, and Václav Havel, all nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize, or Otto Wichterle, whose invention of contact lenses surprisingly did not earn him a Nobel Prize.

Nobel Prizes were awarded posthumously for George Jiří Schulz (1925-1976), who made significant advancements in discovering atomic and molecular resonances and received several honors for his work. Though he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in the 1970s, he experienced a heart attack before receiving the award again.

More Czech footprints in the Nobel Prizes

• • In 1930, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Austrian biologist and physician Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) for his research on blood types and the identification of three blood groups. His mother came from Prostějov. Together with Landsteiner (1868-1943), the Czech physician Jan Janský (1873-1921) independently achieved the same results in blood group classification, almost simultaneously. Had Jansky been alive in 1930, they would likely have shared the Nobel Prize.

• • Leopold Růžička (1887-1976), a Croatian-Swiss chemist born in Vukovar, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939. His grandfather emigrated from Klatovy to establish roots in Bohemia starting in 1817.

• • Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), a Swiss physicist and pioneer in quantum physics, was descended from Prague ancestors. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics, as did Max Perutz (1914-2002), who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962.

• • In Domažlice, Felix Bloch (1905-1983) was born, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952.

• • Also, Thomas Czech (*1947), who was born in Chicago and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989, carries Czech roots, as his grandfather immigrated to the U.S. in the early 20th century. The Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (*1946), who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, also has Czech ancestry, reportedly tracing back to Uherské Hradiště.

• • In 2012, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Brian Kobilka (*1955), professor at Stanford University, who also has Czech roots.