In 2015, Tu Youyou, a pharmaceutical chemist from Ningbo whose discovery of the malaria drug artemisinin saved millions of lives across the globe, received the Nobel Prize in physiology, becoming the first Chinese scientist to win this award.

More than 100 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chinese Academy of Science, China's top academic institutions, are from Ningbo. They contribute to a wide range of research areas, ranging from astronomy, atomic structure and atomic weaponry to artificial satellites and genetics.

Such high academic achievement has also contributed to Ningbo's status as "a city of culture".

Wang Yangming (1472-1529), one of China's leading philosophers, was born in Yuyao, a county-level city in Ningbo. Wang is best known for his doctrine of the "unity of knowing and acting". It states that knowledge and action should be combined, and that one can acquire knowledge through actions. His thoughts still live on and exert a profound influence on Chinese people.

It is also home to China's oldest extant private library at the Tianyi Pavilion. Built in 1561 by Fan Qin, an official during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), in addition to traditional preservation methods, strict family rules were established to manage the library, including one that forbade people from going there after drinking alcohol, and that the descendants should not divide the collection and the books should never be taken away from the library permanently. The book protection program of Fan's family has lasted more than 400 years.

There is a folk song in Ningbo that goes "east or west, Ningbo Jiangxia (a busy street in Ningbo) is the best". It shows that Ningbo people, however accomplished, will never forget their hometown, wherever they are.