Limmud Oz 2017

Jews have won 22% of Nobel Prizes, even though Jews represent only 0.2% of the world’s population. Why is this so? Large numbers of Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi persecution went on to win Nobel Prizes—for example, Albert Einstein, who famously said, “G-d doesn’t play dice with the universe", and Ernest Chain, who was instrumental in the development of penicillin. Some Jews who didn’t escape but survived the war went on to become laureates. Danny Kahneman, educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2002), after showing how irrational humans are when making economic decisions. His story is soon to be made into a Hollywood film. This is a multimedia presentation of some of the surprising personal stories behind Jewish Nobel Laureates, suitable for specialists and/or non-specialists.