Nobel Prize Winners Who Refused Judaism

It is a commonplace that Jews make up less than 1% of the world's population, but between 25% and 30% of the world's Nobel Prize winners. However, that assumes we are supposed to ignore the Nobel Prize winners' own testimony about whether or not they were/are Jewish.

A lot of them refused the title.

1. Albert Einstein (Physics, 1921) — Of Jewish descent; famously described himself as an agnostic and did not practice Judaism religiously, viewing religion more philosophically/culturally.
2. Niels Bohr (Physics, 1922) — Jewish mother (Jewish by matrilineal descent); identified as an atheist or non-religious, with no adherence to Jewish religious practice.
3. Paul Ehrlich (Physiology or Medicine, 1908) – Baptized Lutheran, moved in Christian German circles, did not consider himself Jewish.
4. Richard Feynman (Physics, 1965) — Jewish ancestry; openly identified as a positive atheist and non-believer.
5. Milton Friedman (Economics, 1976) — A prominent economist, he was an atheist/agnostic. He did not maintain religious practice. 
6. Fritz Haber (Chemistry, 1918): Despite his Jewish ancestry, Haber was a fervent German patriot who converted to Lutheranism in 1892, he portrayed himself as a German Christian patriot and actively rejected the idea that he was Jewish.
7. Herbert A. Hauptman (Chemistry, 1985) — Jewish background; grouped with nonreligious (atheist/agnostic) laureates who did not identify religiously as Jewish.
8. Roald Hoffmann (Chemistry, 1981) — Jewish heritage (survivor family); while culturally connected, often grouped with secular or non-theistic Jewish laureates.
9. François Jacob (Physiology or Medicine, 1965) — Born to a Jewish family and raised with some religious exposure; became an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah and did not identify with Judaism.
10. Karl Landsteiner (Physiology or Medicine, 1930) — Jewish mother, baptized and raised Catholic, considered himself Catholic, actively resisted being called Jewish.
11. Élie Metchnikoff (Physiology or Medicine, 1908) — Jewish ancestry but was an atheists/agnostic who did not believe in God or practice/identify with the religion.
12. Rita Levi-Montalcini (Physiology or Medicine, 1986) — Jewish Italian family; secular/non-religious, listed among notable Jewish atheists/agnostics.
13. Jerome Karle (Chemistry, 1985) — Jewish background; identified as agnostic.
14. Harry Kroto (Chemistry, 1996) — Kroto was of Jewish descent but identified as a "devout atheist". He did not view his heritage as a defining factor of his identity
15. Boris Pasternak (Literature, 1958) — Born to an assimilated Jewish family in Moscow; parents were culturally Russian, not religiously Jewish. He was deeply embedded in Russian culture and Orthodoxy‑inflected imagery, but never converted formally.
16. Wolfgang Pauli (Physics, 1945) — Pauli’s father converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism shortly before Pauli's birth, and Pauli was raised as a Roman Catholic. Although he later left the Church and was of Jewish descent, he did not consider himself Jewish.
17. Max Perutz (Chemistry, 1962) — Born into a Jewish family in Austria, Perutz was a baptized Catholic who later became a "devout atheist".
18. Jack Steinberger (Physics, 1988) — Born to a Jewish family; described himself as an atheist and humanist.
19. Adolf von Baeyer (Chemistry, 1905) — Often cited as the first Nobel laureate with Jewish ancestry (on his mother's side), he was baptized and raised Christian, lived as Christian German nobility and did not identify with Judaism.
20. Eugene Wigner (Physics, 1963) — Wigner’s family converted to Lutheranism when he was a teenager. While born to Jewish parents, his formal religious affiliation for most of his life was Christian.
21. Richard Willstätter (Chemistry, 1915) — Converted to Christianity, strongly identified as assimilated German, not as Jewish.
22. Many laureates from assimilated families in Germany or Austro-Hungary, like Hans Krebs, often identified primarily with German culture rather than Jewish identity

965 people have won Nobel Prizes since the establishment of the prize through 2025, only between 30 and 60 could arguably be considered to have acknowledged themselves Jews. Of those, the vast majority won either the Peace Prize or the Literature Prize.

Generally, about 220 of those individuals are considered to be Jewish, primarily due to parentage. NBut, once we exclude the people who clearly did not consider themselves Jewish (the large secular/atheist majority), the remaining group that did identify with Judaism would represent roughly 3–6% of all 965 individual Nobel laureates (or possibly lower, depending on how strictly "identify with Judaism" is defined).

Of course, less than 1% of the world's population and 3% of the Nobel Prizes is pretty good.  But this highlights a real inconsistency in how the "Jewish Nobel" statistic is often presented: it leans heavily on ethnic/heritage counting for one group while religious self-ID is used (or at least implied) for others. When we strip away ancestry-only inclusions and focus on personal identification, the Jewish share drops substantially, the atheist/secular share rises accordingly, and Christians (Catholic + Protestant + others) still dominate.