The Nobel Prize is an annual, international prize first awarded in 1901 for achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. An associated prize in Economics has been awarded since 1969.[1] As of November 2022, Nobel Prizes had been awarded to 954 individuals,[2] of whom 17 were Black recipients (1.7% of the 954 individual recipients).
Black people have received awards in three of six award categories: twelve in Peace (70.6% of the black recipients), four in Literature (23.5%), and one in Economics (5.9%). The first Black recipient, Ralph Bunche, was awarded the Peace Prize in 1950. The most recent, Abdulrazak Gurnah, was awarded his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021.
Two Black laureates – Barack Obama and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – were presidents of their countries (the United States and Liberia respectively) when they were awarded the prize, while Abiy Ahmed was Prime Minister of Ethiopia when he was announced as winner.
An additional award, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden and was first awarded in 1969