Where were the most physics Nobel prizes earned?

Is there such a place as a Nobel prize factory? By this I mean are there places, universities or other research organisations where discoveries or inventions have consistently led to a Nobel prize? Recent research published in the history of science journal of the Royal Society has measured the success for the Nobel prize in physics since its inception in 1901 through to the most recent award in 2019. The author did find a ranking (which is shown as a table in the publication) which has some surprises.

The surprises are due to two aspects of the award. The most obvious is that when the awards are made the recipients have a sparse number of ‘facts’ about them presented: (1) their name, 92) where and when they were born, (3) their affiliation at the time of the award, (4) the prize motivation, and finally (5) their prize share. It is (3) and (5) that provide the most interest according to this paper.

The affiliation at the time of award is just that; where were they working when the prize was announced, not where were they working WHEN they did the research that they received the award for. Subtle but important distinction! each award can only go to three people, who must be alive at the time of the award (this has led to many rivers of ink bemoaning many reasonable and unreasonable claims of bias and prejudice which we can leave for another time). This means if there is one recipient they are awarded a full share, two recipients they receive equal half shares, three recipients either receive equal third shares or one receives half and two others a quarter share of the prize. This all becomes important in allocating shares of an award to the place where the discoveries or inventions were made.

The paper goes into a lot more explanation of discovery and invention, well worth the read, and comes up with a full listing which i am only going to show the top 10: University of Cambridge (1, 5), Bell Labs (2, 12), Columbia University (3, 12), Harvard University (4, 4), Cornell University (5, 12), University of California (6, 1), Sorbonne (Paris) (7,8), Leiden University (7, 18) University of Copenhagen (7, 25) and the University of Chicago (10, 8). Here the second number is the ranking if ‘affiliations at the time of award’ were take. It shows that many organisations are not rewarded (by association) for providing institutional support for great science that led to Nobel prizes - this becomes very apparent when you see the number of Universities that appear on one list but not the other. In addition it demonstrates the contribution made by non-University organisations to an award that - certainly in physics - is seen as the pinnacle of scientific achievement a Nobel prize.