List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Kyoto University
This list of Nobel laureates affiliated with Kyoto University comprehensively shows the alumni, faculty members as well as researchers of Kyoto University who were awarded the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Nobel Prizes, established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, are awarded to individuals who make outstanding contributions in the fields of Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine. An associated prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was instituted by Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, in 1968 and first awarded in 1969.
, 19 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Kyoto University, 11 of them are officially listed as "Kyoto's Nobel Laureates" by the university. Among the 19 laureates, 9 are Kyoto alumni, and 5 have been long-term academic members of the university faculty. Subject-wise, 8 laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, more than any other subject.
Inclusion criteria
The university affiliations in this list are all official academic affiliations such as degree programs and official academic employment. Non-academic affiliations such as advisory committee and administrative staff are generally excluded. The official academic affiliations fall into three categories: 1) Alumni Long-term Academic Staff, and 3) Short-term Academic Staff. Graduates are defined as those who hold Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorate, or equivalent degrees from the Kyoto University, while attendees are those who formally enrolled in a degree program at Kyoto but did not complete the program; thus, honorary degrees, posthumous degrees, summer attendees, exchange students, and auditing students are excluded. The category of "Long-term Academic Staff" consists of tenure/tenure-track and equivalent academic positions, while that of "Short-term Academic Staff" consists of lecturers, postdoctoral researchers, visiting professors/scholars, and equivalent academic positions. At Kyoto, the specific academic title solely determines the type of affiliation, regardless of the actual time the position was held by a laureate.Further explanations on "visitors" under "Short-term Academic Staff" are presented as follows. 1) All informal or personal visits are excluded from the list; 2) all employment-based visiting positions, which carry teaching/research duties, are included as affiliations in the list; 3) as for award/honor-based visiting positions, to minimize controversy this list takes a conservative view and includes the positions as affiliations only if the laureates were required to assume employment-level duty or the laureates specifically classified the visiting positions as "affiliation" or similar in reliable sources such as their curriculum vita. In particular, attending meetings and giving public lectures, talks or non-curricular seminars at Kyoto University is not a form of employment-level duty. Finally, summer visitors are generally excluded from the list unless summer work yielded significant end products such as research publications and components of Nobel-winning work, since summer terms are not part of formal academic years.
| Name | Noble Prize | Year | Description |
| Leo Esaki | Physics | 1973 | Graduate of the Third High School during World War II, which was not a formal university itself and was integrated into Kyoto University in 1949. |
Summary
In the following list, the number following a person's name is the year they received the prize; in particular, a number with asterisk means the person received the award while they were working at Kyoto University. A name underlined implies that this person has already been listed in a previous category.| Alumni | Long-term academic staff | Short-term academic staff | |
| Physics |
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| Chemistry | |||
| Physiology or Medicine | |||
| Economics | |||
| Peace |