Nobel Prizes 2025 - Asian winners past and present
The 2025 Nobel Prize winners have been announced, and we have new Nobel laureates from Asia.
Professor Shimon Sakaguchi from the University of Osaka was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of a previously unknown class of immune cells called regulatory T cells, research that took persistence and nearly 30 years to be properly recognized.
Distinguished Professor Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University’s iCeMS (Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Science) was jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of metal–organic frameworks, or porous coordination polymers.
Asia Research News has written press releases for recent research involving Professor Kitagawa. Read them here:
Pioneering gas-adsorbing materials reveal hidden softness
Interactive networks for capturing gas with high selectivity
Professor Omar Yaghi of the University of California, Berkeley, a co-awardee for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was born in Jordan to a Palestinian family before moving to the US.
Here is a list of Nobel Prize laureates who are from Asia or have roots in Asia.
For the complete list of winners, see the Nobel Prize website.
PHYSICS
- 1930 Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, British India (First Asian and Indian Nobel laureate in Science)
- 1949 Hideki Yukawa, Japan (First Japanese Nobel laureate)
- 1957 Chen Ning Yang, China (First Chinese Nobel laureate)
- 1957 Tsung-Dao Lee, China (First Chinese Nobel laureate)
- 1965 Shin'ichiro Tomonaga, Japan
- 1973 Leo Esaki, Japan
- 1976 Samuel C. C. Ting, United States (Dual-citizen of US and China)
- 1979 Abdus Salam, Pakistan (First Pakistani Nobel laureate)
- 1983 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, United States (Born in India)
- 1998 Daniel C. Tsui, United States (Born in China)
- 2002 Masatoshi Koshiba, Japan
- 2008 Yoichiro Nambu, United States (Born in Japan)
- 2008 Makoto Kobayashi, Japan
- 2008 Toshihide Maskawa, Japan
- 2009 Charles K. Kao, United Kingdom and United States (First Hong Kong resident Nobel laureate)
- 2014 Isamu Akasaki, Japan
- 2014 Hiroshi Amano, Japan
- 2014 Shuji Nakamura, United States (Born in Japan)
- 2015 Takaaki Kajita, Japan
- 2021 Syukuro Manabe, United States (Born in Japan)
CHEMISTRY
- 1981 Kenichi Fukui, Japan (First Asian and Japanese Nobel laureate in Chemistry)
- 1986 Yuan T. Lee, Taiwan and United States (First Taiwanese Nobel laureate)
- 1987 Charles J. Pedersen, United States (Born in Korea)
- 2000 Hideki Shirakawa, Japan
- 2001 Ryōji Noyori, Japan
- 2002 Koichi Tanaka, Japan
- 2004 Aaron Ciechanover, Israel
- 2004 Avram Hershko, Israel
- 2008 Osamu Shimomura, Japan
- 2009 Venki Ramakrishnan, United Kingdom and United States (Born in India)
- 2009 Ada Yonath, Israel
- 2010 Ei-ichi Negishi, Japan
- 2010 Akira Suzuki, Japan
- 2011 Dan Shechtman, Israel
- 2013 Arieh Warshel, Israel and United States
- 2015 Aziz Sancar, Turkey and United States (First Turkish Nobel laureate in science)
- 2019 Akira Yoshino, Japan
- 2025 Susumu Kitagawa, Japan
- 2025 Omar Yaghi, United States (born in Jordan)
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
- 1968 Har Gobind Khorana, United States (Born in India; first Asian and Indian Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine)
- 1987 Susumu Tonegawa, Japan (First Japanese Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine)
- 2012 Shinya Yamanaka, Japan
- 2015 Satoshi Ōmura, Japan
- 2015 Tu Youyou, China (First Chinese woman Nobel laureate)
- 2016 Yoshinori Ohsumi, Japan
- 2018 Tasuku Honjo, Japan
- 2025 Shimon Sakaguchi, Japan
LITERATURE
- 1913 Rabindranath Tagore, British India (First Asian and Indian Nobel laureate)
- 1968 Yasunari Kawabata, Japan
- 1994 Kenzaburō Ōe, Japan
- 2000 Gao Xingjian, France (Born in China)
- 2001 V. S. Naipaul, United Kingdom, Indian origin. Born in Trinidad and Tobago.
- 2006 Orhan Pamuk, Turkey (First Turkish Nobel laureate)
- 2012 Mo Yan, China
- 2017 Kazuo Ishiguro, United Kingdom (Born in Japan)
- 2024 Han Kang, South Korea (First Asian woman Nobel laureate for literature)
PEACE
- 1973 Lê Đức Thọ (declined award), North Vietnam (First Asian and Vietnamese Nobel laureate in Peace)
- 1974 Eisaku Satō, Japan
- 1978 Menachem Begin, Israel
- 1979 Mother Teresa, India (First Asian woman Nobel laureate)
- 1989 Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, India, China, and Tibet (First Tibetan Nobel laureate)
- 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma (First Burmese Nobel laureate)
- 1994 Yasser Arafat, Palestine (First Palestinian Arab Nobel laureate)
- 1994 Shimon Peres, Israel
- 1994 Yitzhak Rabin, Israel
- 1996 Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, Timor-Leste (First Timorese Nobel laureate)
- 1996 José Ramos-Horta, Timor-Leste (First Timorese Nobel laureate)
- 2000 Kim Dae-jung, South Korea (First Korean Nobel laureate)
- 2003 Shirin Ebadi, Iran (First Iranian Nobel laureate)
- 2006 Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh (First Bangladeshi Nobel laureate)
- 2010 Liu Xiaobo, China
- 2011 Tawakkol Karman, Yemen (First Arab Woman and First Yemeni Nobel laureate)
- 2014 Kailash Satyarthi, India
- 2014 Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan (First Pakistani Woman Nobel laureate and youngest Nobel laureate)
- 2018 Nadia Murad, Iraq (First Iraqi Nobel laureate)
- 2021 Maria Ressa, Philippines (First Filipino Nobel laureate)
- 2023 Narges Mohammadi, Iran
- 2024 Nihon Hidankyo, Japan
ECONOMICS
- 1998 Amartya Sen, India (First Asian and Indian Nobel laureate in Economics)
- 2002 Daniel Kahneman, Israel and United States
- 2005 Robert Aumann, Israel and United States
- 2019 Abhijit Banerjee, United States (Born in India)
- 2024 Daron Acemoglu, United States (Born in Turkey)
