Nobel Prize-Winning Hungarian Scientists - Stamps of 1988

Hungarian Jews have existed for the past thousand years. Despite rampant anti-semitism for most of that time, by the early 1900s they grew to be 5% of Hungary's population, with the majority living in the capital, Budapest, and were very successful (like most Jews in the world) in the sciences, the arts and in business.

In fact, there were so many Jews in Budapest that anti-semites at that time referred to the city as Judapest. Hungary is still a very anti-Semitic country today. Want to know how Hungarians view Hungarian Nobel Laureates who happen to be Jewish? In 2004 when Imre Kertész was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, many non-Jewish Hungarians complained about his Jewishness and did not want to consider his Nobel Prize as being a "Hungarian" Nobel Prize.

Of course not everyone in Hungary hates Jews,after all, the Hungarian Postal Service did issue a few stamps of Jewish Nobel laureates (1), see photo top. But I wonder what Hungarians think when they lick the back of stamps with Jews depicted on the front?

Here for your inspection are 13 Nobel Laureates born in Hungary (or Austria-Hungary) or of Hungarian ancestry. Laureates with Jewish ancestry have a "*" after the award year.

As you may notice, the majority of Hungarian Nobel Laureates are Jews. If it were not for Jews, the list of Hungarian Nobel Prize winners would be slim indeed. There would have been even more Nobel Laureates of Hungarian ethnicity but for the deaths of more than 410,000 Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust.