Ireland's Nobel Prize Winners — All Eleven, From Yeats to Campbell

1923 · W. B. Yeats · Literature · born Sandymount, Dublin
Poet and dramatist, one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature and a driving force of the Irish Literary Revival. With Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge he founded the Abbey Theatre, and he later served two terms as a senator of the Irish Free State. Wikipedia ↗
1925 · George Bernard Shaw · Literature · born Dublin
Playwright, critic and polemicist who wrote more than sixty plays, among them Man and Superman, Pygmalion and Saint Joan, and became the leading dramatist of his generation. Wikipedia ↗
1951 · Ernest Walton · Physics · born Abbeyside, Dungarvan, County Waterford
Shared the prize with John Cockcroft "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles" — the first nuclear transmutation produced entirely under human control, achieved at Cambridge with Rutherford. He returned to Ireland in 1934 and taught at Trinity College Dublin until 1974. Wikipedia ↗
1969 · Samuel Beckett · Literature · born Foxrock, Dublin
Playwright, novelist and poet who wrote in English and French, best known for Waiting for Godot, and widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The Nobel citation honoured "his writing, which — in new forms for the novel and drama — in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". Wikipedia ↗
1974 · Seán MacBride · Peace · born Paris
Chief of Staff of the IRA in 1936–37, founder and leader of Clann na Poblachta and Minister for External Affairs from 1948 to 1951, he went on to help found or lead international bodies including the Council of Europe and Amnesty International. Born in France to Maud Gonne and John MacBride. Wikipedia ↗
1976 · Betty Williams · Peace · born Belfast
Shared the prize with Mairead Corrigan for founding the Community of Peace People, which campaigned for a peaceful end to the Troubles. Wikipedia ↗
1976 · Mairead Corrigan Maguire · Peace · born Belfast
Co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which became the Community of Peace People. Wikipedia ↗
1995 · Seamus Heaney · Literature · born Castledawson, County Londonderry
Poet, playwright and translator, whose first major collection was Death of a Naturalist (1966); Robert Lowell called him the most important Irish poet since Yeats. Wikipedia ↗
1998 · John Hume · Peace · born Derry
A founder and leader of the SDLP, who sought an accommodation between nationalism and unionism, opposed the republican "armed struggle" and was recognised by the Nobel committee as an architect of the Good Friday Agreement. Wikipedia ↗
1998 · David Trimble · Peace · born Belfast
Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, instrumental in the negotiations that produced the Good Friday Agreement, and the first First Minister of Northern Ireland. Wikipedia ↗
2015 · William C. Campbell · Physiology or Medicine · born Ramelton, County Donegal
Microbiologist who helped discover the avermectins, a class of drugs whose derivatives treat river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, work done at the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research. Wikipedia ↗

Quick answers

How many Irish people have won the Nobel Prize?

11, in Wikipedia's list of laureates by country: four for literature, five for peace, one for physics and one for medicine.

Who was the first Irish Nobel Prize winner?

W. B. Yeats, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Has an Irish scientist won a Nobel Prize?

Two: Ernest Walton of Waterford shared the 1951 physics prize for splitting the atom with John Cockcroft, and William C. Campbell of Donegal shared the 2015 prize in medicine for the avermectins.

Source

The list follows the Ireland section of Wikipedia's List of Nobel laureates by country ↗; each account is taken from the laureate's own Wikipedia article, linked beside it.

Presidents and Taoisigh · Born in each county

Ireland's Nobel laureates