Jewish scientists were once again listed as recipients of Nobel Prizes this year, continuing a remarkable tradition of success.
Last week, the trio of Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine following their work on the body’s natural rhythms.
Rosbash, 73, a geneticist and chrono-biologist, is the son of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany in 1938.
Another trio was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for work which led to the discovery of gravitational waves, the warping of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago.
The three recipients included Caltech professors Kip Thorne and Barry Barish as well as Rainer Weiss, a physics professor at MIT, whose father was forced out of Germany because he was Jewish.
About 22 percent of all Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish or had Jewish heritage, a phenomenal statistic considering Jews make up only 0.2 percent of the world’s population.
