The Nobel Prize Factory That Is Losing Its Workers

The article analyzes the Israeli phenomenon of a high number of Nobel Prizes per capita and reveals the structural conditions behind this success — immigration waves bringing in talent, top-tier institutions, and a culture of questioning authority. At the same time, it shows that this model is threatened by brain drain, underfunding of basic research, the exclusion of the Arab and ultra-Orthodox populations, and political instability after 2023. In conclusion, it compares the Israeli and Czech approaches to science and identifies which elements are transferable and which are not.

In 1982, the Israeli chemist Dan Shechtman discovered something in an American laboratory that, according to the science of the time, could not exist — a crystalline structure with tenfold rotational symmetry. He announced it to his colleagues and was met with ridicule. The head of his research group told him to go read a crystallography textbook. The two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling declared that quasicrystals do not exist, only "quasi-scientists." Shechtman was expelled from his team.

He refused to back down. In 2011 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry — alone, sharing it with no one.

Shechtman's story is told in Israel as a parable about a culture in which questioning authority is not insolence but a method of inquiry. It is a nice story. But like most stories about the Israeli miracle, it is incomplete. Shechtman made his discovery at what was then the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS, today NIST) in Maryland, not at the Technion in Haifa. And his tale of the lone scientist against the world overlooks the structural conditions that lifted Israeli science to the top — including those that threaten it today.

Since the state was founded in 1948, fourteen Israeli citizens have won the Nobel Prize. For a country of roughly 9.8 million inhabitants, that is a remarkable number — per capita, Israel ranks around 11th worldwide, behind Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom, but ahead of France, Japan and China.

The distribution of the prizes, however, is uneven, and it reveals more than Israeli propaganda would like. Six prizes were awarded in chemistry, four in economics, three for peace and one for literature. In physics and in medicine — the two fields that form the core of natural-science research — Israel has not won a single prize. The zero tally in physics is especially striking for a country that invests 6.35% of GDP in research and development, the most of any OECD member state and more than double the average.

The concentration in chemistry is no accident. It reflects the historical strength of three institutions — the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, the Technion in Haifa and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — which built up chemical and biochemical programs from the 1930s, when they were founded by European émigrés fleeing Nazism. The absence in physics, by contrast, reflects the fact that Israel never built large experimental infrastructure comparable to CERN or the American national laboratories. Science is expensive, and even record investment in research and development has its limits if 92% of it comes from a corporate sector oriented toward commercial outputs.

Israel's fourteen Nobel laureates are part of a broader phenomenon. Of the 965 individual Nobel laureates awarded between 1901 and 2025, at least 220 are of Jewish origin — that is, roughly 22% of all laureates, even though Jews make up a mere 0.2% of the world's population. In economics the share is 40%, in medicine and physiology 26%, in physics 24%.

These figures invite two opposing interpretations. In one, they become proof of an exceptional cultural tradition in which education and intellectual achievement have played a central role for centuries — from the Talmudic tradition of disputation, through the Haskalah, to the modern academy. In the other, they tell a story of privileged access to education in Europe and America, of networks that reproduced themselves, and of the fact that seven out of ten Jewish Nobel laureates are Americans, not Israelis.

Both interpretations contain a kernel of truth. Israel's Nobel success rests on immigration, investment and institutions — three pillars, each with its reverse side.

If we look at the biographies of the fourteen Israeli laureates, we find that most of them either immigrated themselves or are the children of immigrants. Avram Hershko survived the Holocaust as a child in Hungary and came to Israel in 1950. Robert Aumann was born in Germany and his family emigrated to the USA in 1938; only in 1956 did he move to Israel. Ada Yonath was born in Jerusalem to Polish immigrants. Michael Levitt came from South Africa. Arieh Warshel was indeed born on a kibbutz, but his parents were immigrants.

The Israeli education system undoubtedly shaped these people. But it is fair to say that the "manufacture of Nobel laureates" began with recruitment — with the massive waves of immigration that brought European intellectuals to a small country in the 1930s and 1940s, scientists from the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and that continuously absorbed talent from the diaspora.

The key question is: what happens when the immigration source dries up? We can already see the answer today — since 2023 the trend has reversed, and Israel is now losing talent.

In Czech discussions of Israel, the Talpiot program is often mentioned — an elite IDF military training program founded in 1979 as a response to the shock of the Yom Kippur War. Of roughly ten thousand of the best high-school graduates, around two hundred candidates advance to a two-day round of testing. Some 50–60 cadets are admitted each year; for forty months they study physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University while simultaneously undergoing training with all branches of the IDF.

Talpiot produces people who, after leaving the army, found technology companies — Check Point, Compugen, Anobit (acquired by Apple). About a third of graduates stay in the army, a third head into academia and a third into business.

It is an impressive system. But it also deserves a critical look. First, Talpiot's direct influence on Nobel success is zero — none of the fourteen Israeli laureates went through the program (most of them were educated before it was founded). Talpiot is a story about the technology industry and defense, not about basic research.

Second, elite army programs function as a sieve that favors a specific segment of the population. They require an air-force security clearance, which in effect excludes Arab Israelis. The program has historically admitted predominantly Ashkenazi men from wealthier neighborhoods. It is not a democratic model of talent development — it is a system that identifies and accelerates the development of a particular segment of the population.

Third, compulsory military service delays entry into an academic career by three years (for women) up to nine years (for Talpiot graduates). In fields where productivity peaks at an early age, this can be a disadvantage, not an asset.

In 2023, Israel invested 6.35% of GDP in research and development — roughly 28.3 billion dollars. Second-place South Korea reaches 4.96%, third-place Sweden 3.60%, the USA 3.45%. The OECD average is 2.7%.

This figure is real and impressive. But it conceals an important detail: around 92% of this investment comes from the corporate sector. State spending on research is relatively low in Israel by international comparison. The corporate sector invests in applied research with a commercial output — in cybersecurity, medical technology, agricultural technology. Basic research, from which Nobel Prizes grow, is worse off.

Academic salaries in Israel are set by a single nationwide pay scale with no differentiation by university or field. A full professor earns roughly 30,000 shekels per month (about 190,000 koruna) — a fraction of what comparable American universities offer. Research grants from the Israel Science Foundation are smaller and shorter than American NIH grants. The number of senior academic positions at Israeli research universities is today lower than it was forty years ago, while the number of students per professor has more than doubled since 1973.

In other words: Israel has a world-class innovation ecosystem for founding companies, but its academic system chronically underfunds basic research.

Of the fourteen Israeli Nobel laureates, five were working abroad — mostly in the USA — at the time the prize was awarded. Their stories reveal a systemic failure that the propaganda narrative of the "start-up nation" conceals.

Arieh Warshel, a native of kibbutz Sde Nahum, studied at the Weizmann Institute under Shneior Lifson. On the institute's Golem computer he created, together with Michael Levitt, a groundbreaking program for molecular modeling. When he applied for a permanent position at the Weizmann Institute, he did not get it. He moved to the University of Southern California (USC). In 2013 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry — for work he had begun at the institution that rejected him.

Michael Levitt, born in Pretoria and holding four citizenships, wanted to maintain a dual affiliation between Stanford and the Weizmann Institute. He ran up against institutional inflexibility. In the end he stayed at Stanford.

Daniel Kahneman, the father of behavioral economics, collaborated with Amos Tversky at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He moved to Princeton. Tversky, his closest collaborator, died in 1996 — otherwise he would undoubtedly have shared the prize.

Joshua Angrist criticized the Israeli pay system, which makes no distinction between fields. An economist at MIT cannot earn more in Israel than a history teacher at the same university. He left for MIT in 1996.

Joel Mokyr, the newest addition to the list (Nobel Prize in Economics 2025), was born in the Netherlands, grew up in Haifa and earned his bachelor's degree at the Hebrew University. His entire academic career, however, was spent at Northwestern University in the USA, where he has worked since 1974.

Five out of fourteen — 36% of Israeli Nobel laureates — won the prize as emigrants. This is not an anomaly; it is a symptom.

Since October 2023, when the war in Gaza began, the brain drain has accelerated dramatically. According to a study by economists at Tel Aviv University, between January 2023 and September 2024 roughly 90,000 citizens left Israel, including hundreds of PhD holders and thousands of engineers. A report submitted to the Knesset, based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, states that in 2023 alone more than 82,000 Israeli citizens emigrated — significantly above the long-term average of about 25,000 per year.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2024 12% of all Israelis with a doctorate lived abroad. For doctorates in mathematics it is nearly 25%. In total, almost 55,000 graduates of Israeli universities had lived abroad for more than three years.

In the technology sector, more than 8,300 employees left between October 2023 and July 2024 — an average of around 900 per month. The sector, which employs 11% of the workforce but generates 20% of GDP and more than half of exports, recorded a drop in employment in 2024 for the first time in a decade — by 5,000 people.

There are two causes, and they reinforce each other. The judicial reform launched in January 2023 triggered mass protests and fundamental doubts about the stability of institutions. The war in Gaza added security uncertainty. Technology companies began moving operations to the USA and Europe — not as a temporary measure, but as strategic diversification.

The economist Itai Ater of Tel Aviv University warned that without change Israel could fall into a downward spiral familiar from countries that have gone through massive brain drain — such as Lebanon, Venezuela or Argentina. The Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover, one of the few laureates who stayed, repeatedly points out that the loss of human capital represents an existential threat to a country whose prosperity rests on it.

Israeli chutzpah — the audacity unafraid to question authority — is a genuine cultural phenomenon, not just an advertising slogan. It springs from the Talmudic tradition of disputation, where questioning is not disrespect but a method of inquiry; from the flat hierarchies of the IDF, where eighteen-year-olds command complex operations; and from the social density of a small country, where the circles of school, army, university and industry constantly overlap.

Shechtman's story is its embodiment. But chutzpah has its dark side too. It functions as a filter that lets through those who "fit" the culture — and indirectly excludes the rest.

Israel's Arab citizens, who make up roughly 21% of the population, are practically invisible in the Nobel narrative. They have no access to military technology programs. Arab universities do not have comparable research budgets. Israeli science is, in reality, the science of one part of society.

The ultra-Orthodox population (Haredim), which is growing rapidly and today makes up roughly 13% of citizens, systematically does not contribute to scientific research. Men in this community traditionally do not study secular subjects and do not serve in the army. The current coalition government — the most religious in Israel's history — passed legislation exempting the Haredim from military service, which provoked outrage among the secular technology elite and contributed to the brain drain.

The Israeli "Nobel Prize factory" model thus worked under specific historical conditions: a secular Ashkenazi elite with access to quality education, massive waves of immigration bringing talent, geopolitical pressure motivating investment in technology. Each of these conditions is now changing or weakening.

The Czech reader may be tempted to derive a simple recipe from the Israeli story: let us invest in research and development and we too will have Nobel laureates. It is not that simple.

The Czech Republic invests 1.82% of GDP in research and development (the figure for 2023) — below the EU average (around 2.3%) and less than a third of the Israeli level. Moreover, since 2014, when the share stood at 1.94%, it has been moving away from the EU average. Of the fourteen companies that invested more than a billion koruna in research and development in 2024, thirteen were under foreign control — so the Czech Republic to a large extent "does research for someone else." With the exception of Jaroslav Heyrovský, who won the Nobel Prize for polarography in 1959, no Czech scientist has received this award for work carried out at a Czech institution. The system for identifying and supporting talent is incomparably weaker in the Czech Republic than in Israel.

Certain partial principles can, however, be taken from the Israeli model. Systematic identification of gifted children from primary school onward. Linking academia with industry through technology transfer (the Weizmann Institute founded its commercial arm Yeda as early as 1959, the Hebrew University founded Yissum in 1964 — decades before this became common in the USA). A culture in which questioning a professor is not a disciplinary offense but an educational method.

What cannot be taken over: a military model of talent development in a country where the army plays no comparable role. Massive immigration waves in a country that is, rather, losing talent. And above all: one cannot copy a culture that was shaped by centuries of specific historical experience.

The Israeli Nobel story is a story of a confluence of unique factors: immigration waves bringing talent, geopolitical pressure motivating investment, a culture of questioning authority, and three top-tier institutions linked to American universities. None of these factors is sufficient on its own — only their interplay created an ecosystem capable of producing Nobel laureates from a population smaller than Prague and its surroundings.

The open question is sustainability. In 2023, for the first time in two decades, more start-ups closed down in Israel than were founded. Venture capital declined. The most right-wing and most religious government in the country's history stands in ideological opposition to the secular technology elite that created the entire system. The 2025 Stanford AI Index ranks Israel first in the emigration of artificial-intelligence experts.

Israel built a Nobel Prize factory. Now the workers are leaving it.

Dan Shechtman, now eighty-five, still lectures at the Technion. Asked what kept him going through the years of ridicule, he answered simply: he knew what he saw in the electron microscope, and no authority in the world could change that. The question of whether Israel can sustain an environment in which such defiance of convention can grow remains open.

The article draws on data from the OECD, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the Israel Innovation Authority, the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ), NobelPrize.org and the Stanford AI Index 2025. The brain-drain figures reflect the situation as of December 2025.

Transparency of creation:

The concept, structure and editorial line of the article are the work of the author, who prepared the content outline, established the key theses and directed the entire creation process. Generative AI (Claude, Anthropic) was used as a technical tool for research, fact-checking and fleshing out the author's draft.

The author continuously edited the outputs, verified the key findings and approved the final wording. No part of the text was published without human review. All factual data were verified against the publicly available sources cited in the text.

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