Jews Elected to Foreign Membership in the Royal Society

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Election to the British Royal Society is one of the greatest distinctions in the world of science. Approximately 1,450 individuals currently hold this honor, of whom about ninety percent are citizens or residents of British Commonwealth countries or the Republic of Ireland. These are the "Fellows" of the Society. The remaining roughly ten percent are designated "Foreign Members." The Foreign Membership of the Royal Society thus represents the "cream" of international science outside the Commonwealth countries and the Irish Republic. Listed below are individuals, both living and deceased, elected to Foreign Membership between 1901 and the present (i.e., over the same period of time during which the Nobel Prizes have been awarded) who were, or are, Jewish, or of half- or three-quarters-Jewish descent, as noted. Note that although the majority of individuals on the list below are not Nobel Prize winners, the percentage of Jews and those of Jewish descent elected to Foreign Membership between 1901 and the present closely matches the overall percentage of such individuals who have received Nobel Prizes in the sciences, medicine, and economics. The year shown in parenthesis for each individual is the year of his or her election.

Anatole Abragam (1983)
Alexei Abrikosov¹ (2001)
Yakir Aharonov (2024)
Bruce Alberts (1993)
Vladimir Arnold² (1988)
Kenneth Arrow (2006)
Richard Axel (2014)
Julius Axelrod (1979)
David Baltimore (1987)
Grigory Barenblatt (2000)
Barry Barish (2019)
Bonnie Bassler³ (2012)
Seymour Benzer (1976)
Paul Berg (1992)
Hans Bethe⁴ (1957)
Konrad Bloch (1985)
Niels Bohr⁵ (1926)
Raoul Bott⁶ (2005)
Ronald Breslow (2000)
Edouard Brézin (2006)
Michael Brown (1991)
Melvin Calvin (1959)
Emily Carter (2024)
Vinton Cerf⁷ (2016)
Catherine Cesarsky (2005)
Martin Chalfie (2018)
David Chandler (2011)
Ernst Cohen (1926)
Stanley Deser (2021)
Carl Djerassi (2010)
Paul Ehrlich (1910)
Paul R. Ehrlich (2012)
Albert Einstein (1921)
Odile Eisenstein (2023)
Thomas Eisner⁸ (1997)
Gertrude Elion (1995)
Paul Erdös (1989)
Stanley Falkow (2007)
Ugo Fano (1995)
Tom Fenchel (2007)
Richard Feynman (1965)
Edmond Fischer⁹ (2010)
Simon Flexner (1919)
James Franck (1964)
Daan Frenkel (2006)
Sigmund Freud (1936)
Herbert Freundlich¹⁰ (1939)
Jeffrey Friedman (2018)
Karl von Frisch ¹¹ (1954)
Israel Gelfand (1977)
Murray Gell-Mann (1978)
Walter Gilbert (1987)
Henry Gilman (1975)
Vitaly Ginzburg (1987)
Roy Glauber (1997)
Salome Glueksohn-Waelsch (1995)
Peter Goldreich (2004)
Victor Goldschmidt (1943)
Joseph Goldstein (1991)
Shafi Goldwasser (2023)
Mikhail Gromov¹² (2011)
Jacques Hadamard (1932)
Erwin Hahn (2000)
Stephen Harrison (2014)
Michael Heidelberger (1975)
Ludimar Hermann (1905)
George de Hevesy (1939)
Roald Hoffmann (1984)
H. Robert Horvitz (2009)
Francois Jacob (1973)
Eric Kandel (2013)
Theodore von Karman (1946)
Martin Karplus (2000)
Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir (1977)
Joseph Keller (1986)
Isaak Khalatnikov (1994)
Marc Kirschner (1999)
Margaret Kivelson (2020)
Walter Kohn (1998)
Arthur Kornberg (1970)
Roger Kornberg (2009)
Hugo Kronecker (1909)
Martin Kruskal (1997)
Stephen Kuffler ¹³ (1971)
Edwin Land (1986)
Lev Landau (1960)
Karl Landsteiner (1941)
Joshua Lederberg (1979)
Solomon Lefschetz (1961)
Tullio Levi-Civita (1930)
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1995)
Elliott Lieb (2013)
Evgeny Lifshitz (1982)
Fritz Lipmann (1962)
Otto Loewi (1954)
André Lwoff (1958)
Michael Mann (2024)
Rudolph Marcus (1987)
Gail Martin (2015)
Lise Meitner (1955)
Matthew Meselson (1984)
Otto Meyerhof (1937)
Elliot Meyerowitz (2004)
Albert Michelson (1902)
David Milstein (2019)
Henri Moisson¹⁴ (1905)
J. Anthony Movshon¹⁵ (2024)
Hermann Muller¹⁶(1953)
Walter Munk (1976)
George Olah (1997)
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1962)
Jeremiah Ostriker (2007)
Wolfgang Pauli¹⁷ (1953)
Alexander Pines (2002)
Frank Press (1985)
Stanley Prusiner (1997)
Michael Rabin (2007)
Aviv Regev (2024)
Tadeus Reichstein (1952)
Michael Rossmann¹⁸ (1996)
James Rothman (2019)
Gerald Rubin (2007)
Edwin Salpeter (1993)
Randy Schekman (2013)
Martin Schwarzschild¹⁹ (1996)
Adi Shamir (2018)
Carla Shatz (2011)
Yakov Sinai (2009)
Susan Solomon (2008)
Tracy Sonneborn (1964)
Joseph Stiglitz (2009)
Edward Stolper (2011)
Howard Stone (2022)
Gilbert Stork (1999)
Clifford Tabin (2014)
Valentine Telegdi (2003)
Howard Temin (1988)
Ronald Vale (2023)
Moshe Vardi (2023)
Harold Varmus (2005)
Vito Volterra (1910)
Otto Warburg²⁰ (1934)
André Weil (1966)
Steven Weinberg (1981)
Charles Weissmann (1983)
Wendelin Werner (2020)
Susan Wessler (2017)
Frank Westheimer (1983)
Eugene Wigner (1970)
Richard Willstätter (1928)
Edward Witten (1999)
Carl Wunsch (2002)
Eli Yablonovitch (2013)
Charles Yanofsky (1985)
Ada Yonath (2020)
Richard Zare (1999)
Yakov Zeldovich (1979)

NOTES
1. Jewish mother (née Fanya Davidovna Vulf), non-Jewish father; see The Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry, Biographies A-I, edited by Herman Branover (Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 1998, p. 10) and the interview in Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists, by Balazs Hargittai and István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2005, p. 185).
2. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see Celestial Encounters, by F. Diacu and P. Holmes (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996, p. 191).
3. Jewish father.
4. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. See, e.g., In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist, by S. S. Schweber (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2000, pp. 76, 87).
5. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. See, e.g., The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery, by Abraham Pais (Oxford University Press, Oxford and London, 2000, p. 14-15).
6. Jewish mother and step-father, non-Jewish father; see Raoul Bott: Collected Papers, Vol. 1 (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1994, pp. 11-12).
7. Jewish, or mostly Jewish, father, non-Jewish mother. At least three of Vinton Cerf's four paternal great grandparents were Jews. Bennett Cerf, the (Jewish) co-founder of publishing giant Random House, was a cousin.
8. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother; see http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/03/tom-eisner-father-chemical-ecology-dies-81.
9. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, according to a follow-up dispatch issued by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) several days after publication of its October 14, 1992 story on that year's Nobel Prizes written by Tom Tugend.
10. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother; see Juden im Deutschen Kulturbereich: Ein Sammelwerk, edited by Siegmund Kaznelson (Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin, 1959, pp. 441-442, 466, 478).
11. Jewish maternal grandmother, Charlotte (née Dusensy) Exner; see The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language, by Tania Munz (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2016, pp. 107-108). See also Wer Einmal War: Das Jüdische Grossbürgertum Wiens 1800-1938, Volume 2: L-R, by Georg Gaugusch (Amalthea Verlag, Vienna, 2016, p. 2753). Under traditional Jewish Law, an individual descended from a maternal Jewish grandmother is considered fully Jewish.
12. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see, e.g., Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century, by Masha Gessen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2009, p. 108).
13. Stephen Kuffler, known as the "father of modern neuroscience," was described as having had a Jewish paternal grandmother by his colleague Nobel Prize winner Sir Bernard Katz and as having had "one Jewish grandfather" by his former student Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel. In fact, all four of Kuffler's grandparents were Jews, although he was baptized into the Reformed Church of Hungary and identified as a Roman Catholic most of his life. His paternal grandparents were Benjamin and Flora (née Mittelmann) Kuffler; his maternal grandparents were Adolf and Julia (née Schlesinger) Kohn. (Contrary to other biographical information, his mother was born Elsa (or Elza) Kohn, not Elsa Kertesz.) Kuffler's paternal grandparents are buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Györ, Györ-Moson-Sopron, Hungary. His uncle Paul (Pal) Kuffler, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1944, is buried in the Kozma Street Jewish Cemetery in Budapest.
14. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see Encyclopaedia Judaica (Keter, Jerusalem, 1972, Vol. 12, p. 222-223).
15. Jewish father.
16. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1946/muller-bio.html.
17. Pauli described himself as being three-quarters Jewish in a letter to Frank Aydelotte, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study, quoted in the April 1995 issue of Physics Today (p. 86). See also http://www.ethbib.ethz.ch/exhibit/pauli/ausreise_e.html. According to the family-authorized biography of Pauli by Charles Enz, No Time to be Brief: A Scientific Biography of Wolfgang Pauli (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2002, pp. 1-7), three of Pauli's four grandparents (all but his maternal grandmother) were Jewish. Specifically, Pauli's father, Wolfgang Pauli, Sr. (originally Wolf Pascheles, whose parents came from the prominent Jewish Pascheles and Utitz families of Prague), converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism shortly before his marriage in 1899 to Bertha Camilla Schütz. Bertha Schütz was raised in her mother's Roman Catholic religion, but her father was the Jewish writer Friedrich Schütz (whose biography can be found on p. 469 of Vol. 5 of S. Wininger's Grosse Jüdische National-Biographie). Although Pauli was raised as a Roman Catholic, eventually he (and his parents) left the Church.
18. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father according to interview in Bitter Prerequisites: A Faculty for Survival from Nazi Terror, by William Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt (Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 2001, p. 48). See also http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/010216.Nat.Ahlbrandt.book.html.
19. Jewish father, astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild, non-Jewish mother. See, e.g., Juden im Deutschen Kulturbereich: Ein Sammelwerk, edited by Siegmund Kaznelson (Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin, 1959, p. 399).
20. Jewish father, physicist Emil Warburg, non-Jewish mother. See, e.g., Juden im Deutschen Kulturbereich: Ein Sammelwerk, edited by Siegmund Kaznelson (Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin, 1959, pp. 407, 439, 453, 457, 476).