Brain Flow and Time Machine
Where prize winners were born against where they did the work, and who led the world in each decade.
Data as of
2,744 prize rows · 1901 to 2026 · Nobel Prize API, Wikidata
- 2,744Prize rowsDated rows on the Mind boards
- 51.2%Both ends a metroBorn and worked-at resolved to a metro
- 59%Both ends a countryUsed by the country tables
- 503Crossed a borderPrize rows that changed country
Net importers and exporters by era
A prize moves its weight from the laureate's birth place to the place credited for the work.
How this is measured
Net is the prize weight arriving in a place minus the weight leaving it. The era is the year of the prize, not the year of the move, so an emigrant of the 1930s shows up when the prize arrived, often decades later. Laureates who worked in the place they were born are stayers and are not counted as a flow.
Countries are credited as they stood: a laureate born in Prague in 1880 was born in Austria-Hungary, one born in Kyiv in 1930 in the Soviet Union. Former states are tagged. Where the Time Machine lists a country as divided between empires in the birth year (Poland before 1918, for one), the row is left out of the country tables rather than guessed.
182 prize rows in 1901 to 1932. 24 moved country and 116 worked in the country of their birth; 85 moved metro and 15 stayed in their birth metro.
Countries: net importers
Places that gained more prize weight from laureates born elsewhere than they lost.
Countries: net exporters
Places whose laureates did their prize work elsewhere. A former state is the place of birth as it stood in the birth year.
Metros: net importers
Both ends resolved to a metro. The 40 largest gains.
Metros: net exporters
The 40 largest losses: born here, prize work done elsewhere.
Biggest country corridors
Born in the first, worked in the second, ranked by prize weight.
Biggest metro corridors
The same, between metros.
Flow by country
Born here and worked elsewhere, and the reverse, with the top destinations and origins.
How this is measured
All eras together. Weight is prize points; people counts distinct laureates. Stayed is the share of weight born here that also worked here.
- 137.3Born here, worked elsewhere38 people, prize weight
- 193.0Worked here, born elsewhere30 people, prize weight
- +55.7NetA net importer of minds
- 75%StayedOf weight born here, share that worked here
By era
Where Germany laureates went
Born in Germany, prize work elsewhere: top destinations.
Where Germany laureates came from
Prize work in Germany, born elsewhere: top origins.
Metro corridors touching Germany
Where both ends resolve to a metro.
The Mind Time Machine
The leading metro and country for laurels in each decade since 1901.
How this is measured
Each decade is scored on a rolling 20-year window of prize weight ending in its last year, with the same trailing-window idea as the Universal Index, so one great year does not decide a decade. The first rows have fewer than 20 years to count because the prizes begin in 1901.
Score is prize weight placed in the 20 years ending in the last year of the decade. The 2020s row ends in 2026.
Who led, year by year
The leader of each rolling 20-year window, by the year the window ends, from 1920.
- Paris 1920 to 1932
- Berlin 1933 to 1934
- Paris 1935 to 1939
- London 1940 to 1945
- New York 1946
- London 1947 to 1948
- New York 1949
- London 1950
- New York 1951 to 1970
- Boston 1971 to 1983
- New York 1984
- Boston 1985 to 1998
- New York 1999 to 2003
- Boston 2004
- New York 2005 to 2026
Where these numbers come from14 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 (or, for Nobel Literature and Peace people, where they lived then), 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. Where Wikidata gives no town for a Literature or Peace laureate, only the country of citizenship is credited. A birthplace outside every metro credits its country only.
Brain flow uses the 51.2% of prize rows where both the birth place and the credited work place resolve to a metro, and the 59% where both resolve to a country; 34 rows born in a country the Time Machine lists as divided between empires are left out of the country tables. Worked-at places are the harder half to find, so metros and countries with many unresolved affiliations are understated on the import side. Birth countries as they stood come from the Countries Time Machine polity table.