Out of eleven Nobel laureates named in 2020 so far, four have been women - quite a good quota considering that the prestigious honor has only gone to women 6 percent of the time since its inception in 1901. On Thursday, U.S. American poet Louise Glück received the Nobel Prize in literature - only the 16th woman to ever do so. On Monday, the prize in economic sciences went to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson of Stanford University for "improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats".
Marie Curie was the first female to receive the Nobel Price in 1903 and the only one to receive it twice. There have been a total of 57 women Nobel laureates, most of them in the peace and literature categories. The chart below shows a gender breakdown of all (non-institutional) Nobel Prize winners. The fewest women have received a prize in economics and physics: Two out of 84 and four out of 216, respectively.
In the most recent decades, women have won Nobel Prizes more often. Between 2001 and 2020, 28 women have received the honor, compared with only eleven between 1981 and 2000 and only seven between 1961 and 1980.
