The Mind of the Metros
Prizes, credited to the places that produced the winners.
Data as of
2,410 laureates · 34 prizes in 14 families · Nobel Prize API, Wikidata, FIDE
2026 winners
This year's laureates so far, with the metro they worked at, or were born in when none is on record.
Top metros, worked at
Where laureates did the work.
| # | Metro | Score | Laureates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | 717.3 | 162 |
| 2 | Boston | 579.9 | 133 |
| 3 | San Francisco-San Jose | 448.7 | 101 |
| 4 | Paris | 280.3 | 57 |
| 5 | Cambridge | 230.8 | 46 |
| 6 | Los Angeles | 217.2 | 40 |
| 7 | London | 205.3 | 46 |
| 8 | Chicago | 193.1 | 42 |
| 9 | Washington-Baltimore | 152.2 | 44 |
| 10 | Berlin | 115.0 | 16 |
Top metros, born in
Where laureates were born.
| # | Metro | Score | Laureates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | 782.1 | 199 |
| 2 | Paris | 319.8 | 66 |
| 3 | London | 292.4 | 66 |
| 4 | Chicago | 232.0 | 59 |
| 5 | Boston | 229.3 | 49 |
| 6 | Vienna | 141.2 | 26 |
| 7 | Washington-Baltimore | 139.2 | 43 |
| 8 | Budapest | 131.3 | 20 |
| 9 | Philadelphia | 125.1 | 32 |
| 10 | Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe | 113.4 | 23 |
Top countries
Worked-at score, by country.
| # | Country | Score | Laureates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 3361.2 | 796 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 713.7 | 148 |
| 3 | Germany | 568.6 | 95 |
| 4 | France | 341.1 | 70 |
| 5 | Switzerland | 259.7 | 47 |
| 6 | Japan | 141.7 | 40 |
| 7 | Sweden | 133.3 | 21 |
| 8 | Netherlands | 111.7 | 20 |
| 9 | Canada | 104.4 | 24 |
| 10 | Russia | 80.8 | 20 |
Chess
The same question for a game: which players and countries rate highest.
FIDE standard rating list · 2026-10
Magnus Carlsen leads at 2823
United States has the highest top-10 average (2722.8). Top 100 players and 204 federations ranked.
Open the chess ratings
Where these numbers come from11 Oct 2026
Prize winners come from the Nobel Prize API (nobelprize.org) and Wikidata. Each winner is placed on the site’s metros by where they worked when the prize was awarded, and by where they were born.
Every prize-year carries a tier weight: Tier 1 (Nobel, Fields, Abel, Turing) 10, Tier 2 (Pritzker, Wolf, Breakthrough, Kyoto, Lasker, Crafoord) 5, Tier 3 (Booker, Pulitzer, Hugo, Praemium Imperiale) 2. The weight is divided equally among that prize-year’s winners, so a shared prize splits its points.
Organisations count for their headquarters. A winner whose place could not be resolved appears in the laureates list but on no board. Affiliation is harder to find than birthplace, so the worked-at boards understate places whose laureates are not yet resolved.