Nobel Laureates in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics (Swedish: Nobelpriset i fysik) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel (who died in 1896), awarded for outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by a committee that consists of five members elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 1901 to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, of Germany. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years.The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
List of Nobel Laureates in Physics:
| Year | Laureate | Country | Rationale |
| 1901 | Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen | Germany | “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him” |
| 1902 | Hendrik Lorentz | Netherlands | “in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena” |
| Pieter Zeeman | Netherlands | ||
| 1903 | Antoine Henri Becquerel | France | “[for] his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity” |
| Pierre Curie | France | “[for] their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel” | |
| Marie Curie | Poland / France | ||
| 1904 | John William Strutt | United Kingdom | “for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies” |
| 1905 | Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard | Germany | “for his work on cathode rays” |
| 1906 | Joseph John Thomson | United Kingdom | “[for] his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases” |
| 1907 | Albert Abraham Michelson | United States | “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid”[14] |
| 1908 | Gabriel Lippmann | France | “for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference”[15] |
| 1909 | Guglielmo Marconi | Italy | “[for] their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy”[16] |
| Karl Ferdinand Braun | Germany | ||
| 1910 | Johannes Diderik van der Waals | Netherlands | “for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids”[17] |
| 1911 | Wilhelm Wien | Germany | “for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat”[18] |
| 1912 | Nils Gustaf Dalén | Sweden | “for his invention of automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses and buoys”[19] |
| 1913 | Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes | Netherlands | “for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium”[20] |
| 1914 | Max von Laue | Germany | “For his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals”,[21] an important step in the development of X-ray spectroscopy. |
| 1915 | William Henry Bragg | United Kingdom | “For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays”,[22] an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography |
| William Lawrence Bragg | United Kingdom | ||
| 1916 | |||
| 1917 | Charles Glover Barkla | United Kingdom | “For his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements”,[23] another important step in the development of X-ray spectroscopy |
| 1918 | Max Planck | Germany | “[for] the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta”[24] |
| 1919 | Johannes Stark | Germany | “for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields”[25] |
| 1920 | Charles Édouard Guillaume | Switzerland | “[for] the service he has rendered to precision measurements in physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel-steel alloys”[26] |
| 1921 | Albert Einstein | Germany | “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”[27] |
| 1922 | Niels Bohr | Denmark | “for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them”[28] |
| 1923 | Robert Andrews Millikan | United States | “for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect”[29] |
| 1924 | Manne Siegbahn | Sweden | “for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy”[30] |
| 1925 | James Franck | Germany | “for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom”[31] |
| Gustav Hertz | Germany | ||
| 1926 | Jean Baptiste Perrin | France | “for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium”[32] |
| 1927 | Arthur Holly Compton | United States | “for his discovery of the effect named after him”[33] |
| Charles Thomson Rees Wilson | United Kingdom | “for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour”[33] | |
| 1928 | Owen Willans Richardson | United Kingdom | “for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him”[34] |
| 1929 | Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie | France | “for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons”[35] |
| 1930 | Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman | India | “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him”[36] |
| 1931 | |||
| 1932 | Werner Heisenberg | Germany | “for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen”[37] |
| 1933 | Erwin Schrödinger | Austria | “for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory”[38] |
| Paul Dirac | United Kingdom | ||
| 1934 | |||
| 1935 | James Chadwick | United Kingdom | “for the discovery of the neutron”[39] |
| 1936 | Victor Francis Hess | Austria | “for his discovery of cosmic radiation”[40] |
| Carl David Anderson | United States | “for his discovery of the positron”[40] | |
| 1937 | Clinton Joseph Davisson | United States | “for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals”[41] |
| George Paget Thomson | United Kingdom | ||
| 1938 | Enrico Fermi | Italy | “for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons”[42] |
| 1939 | Ernest Lawrence | United States | “for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements”[43] |
| 1940 | |||
| 1941 | |||
| 1942 | |||
| 1943 | Otto Stern | United States | “for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton”[44] |
| 1944 | Isidor Isaac Rabi | United States | “for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei”[45] |
| 1945 | Wolfgang Pauli | Austria | “for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli principle”[46] |
| 1946 | Percy Williams Bridgman | United States | “for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made there within the field of high pressure physics”[47] |
| 1947 | Edward Victor Appleton | United Kingdom | “for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer”[48] |
| 1948 | Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett | United Kingdom | “for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation”[49] |
| 1949 | Hideki Yukawa | Japan | “for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces”[50] |
| 1950 | Cecil Frank Powell | United Kingdom | “for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method”[51] |
| 1951 | John Douglas Cockcroft | United Kingdom | “for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles”[52] |
| Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton | Ireland | ||
| 1952 | Felix Bloch | United States | “for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith”[53] |
| Edward Mills Purcell | United States | ||
| 1953 | Frits Zernike | Netherlands | “for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope”[54] |
| 1954 | Max Born | United Kingdom | “for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction”[55] |
| Walther Bothe | West Germany | “for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith”[55] | |
| 1955 | Willis Eugene Lamb | United States | “for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum”[56] |
| Polykarp Kusch | United States | “for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron”[56] | |
| 1956 | John Bardeen | United States | “for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect”[57] |
| Walter Houser Brattain | United States | ||
| William Bradford Shockley | United States | ||
| 1957 | Tsung-Dao Lee | Republic of China | “for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles”[58] |
| Chen Ning Yang | Republic of China | ||
| 1958 | Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov | Soviet Union | “for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect”[59] |
| Il’ya Frank | Soviet Union | ||
| Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm | Soviet Union | ||
| 1959 | Owen Chamberlain | United States | “for their discovery of the antiproton”[60] |
| Emilio Gino Segrè | Italy | ||
| 1960 | Donald Arthur Glaser | United States | “for the invention of the bubble chamber”[61] |
| 1961 | Robert Hofstadter | United States | “for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons”[62] |
| Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer | West Germany | “for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name”[62] | |
| 1962 | Lev Davidovich Landau | Soviet Union | “for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium”[63] |
| 1963 | Eugene Paul Wigner | United States | “for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles”[64] |
| Maria Goeppert-Mayer | United States | “for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure”[64] | |
| J. Hans D. Jensen | West Germany | ||
| 1964 | Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov | Soviet Union | “for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle”[65] |
| Aleksandr Prokhorov | Soviet Union | ||
| Charles Hard Townes | United States | ||
| 1965 | Richard Phillips Feynman | United States | “for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles”[66] |
| Julian Schwinger | United States | ||
| Sin-Itiro Tomonaga | Japan | ||
| 1966 | Alfred Kastler | France | “for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms”[67] |
| 1967 | Hans Albrecht Bethe | United States | “for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars”[68] |
| 1968 | Luis Walter Alvarez | United States | “for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis”[69] |
| 1969 | Murray Gell-Mann | United States | “for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions”[70] |
| 1970 | Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén | Sweden | “for fundamental work and discoveries in magneto-hydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics”[71] |
| Louis Néel | France | “for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics”[71] | |
| 1971 | Dennis Gabor | United Kingdom | “for his invention and development of the holographic method”[72] |
| 1972 | John Bardeen | United States | “for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory”[73] |
| Leon Neil Cooper | United States | ||
| John Robert Schrieffer | United States | ||
| 1973 | Leo Esaki | Japan | “for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively”[74] |
| Ivar Giaever | United States Norway |
||
| Brian David Josephson | United Kingdom | “for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effect”[74] | |
| 1974 | Martin Ryle | United Kingdom | “for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars”[75] |
| Antony Hewish | United Kingdom | ||
| 1975 | Aage Bohr | Denmark | “for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection”[76] |
| Ben Roy Mottelson | Denmark | ||
| Leo James Rainwater | United States | ||
| 1976 | Burton Richter | United States | “for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind”[77] |
| Samuel Chao Chung Ting | United States | ||
| 1977 | Philip Warren Anderson | United States | “for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems”[78] |
| Nevill Francis Mott | United Kingdom | ||
| John Hasbrouck Van Vleck | United States | ||
| 1978 | Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa | Soviet Union | “for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics”[79] |
| Arno Allan Penzias | United States | “for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation”[79] | |
| Robert Woodrow Wilson | United States | ||
| 1979 | Sheldon Lee Glashow | United States | “for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current”[80] |
| Abdus Salam | Pakistan | ||
| Steven Weinberg | United States | ||
| 1980 | James Watson Cronin | United States | “for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons”[81] |
| Val Logsdon Fitch | United States | ||
| 1981 | Nicolaas Bloembergen | United States | “for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy”[82] |
| Arthur Leonard Schawlow | United States | ||
| Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn | Sweden | “for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy”[82] | |
| 1982 | Kenneth G. Wilson | United States | “for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions”[83] |
| 1983 | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | India, United States | “for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars”[84] |
| William Alfred Fowler | United States | “for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe”[84] | |
| 1984 | Carlo Rubbia | Italy | “for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction”[85] |
| Simon van der Meer | Netherlands | ||
| 1985 | Klaus von Klitzing | West Germany | “for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect”[86] |
| 1986 | Ernst Ruska | West Germany | “for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope”[87] |
| Gerd Binnig | West Germany | “for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope”[87] | |
| Heinrich Rohrer | Switzerland | ||
| 1987 | Johannes Georg Bednorz | West Germany | “for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials”[88] |
| Karl Alexander Müller | Switzerland | ||
| 1988 | Leon Max Lederman | United States | “for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino”[89] |
| Melvin Schwartz | United States | ||
| Jack Steinberger | United States | ||
| 1989 | Norman Foster Ramsey | United States | “for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks”[90] |
| Hans Georg Dehmelt | United States | “for the development of the ion trap technique”[90] | |
| Wolfgang Paul | West Germany | ||
| 1990 | Jerome I. Friedman | United States | “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics”[91] |
| Henry Way Kendall | United States | ||
| Richard E. Taylor | Canada | ||
| 1991 | Pierre-Gilles de Gennes | France | “for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers”[92] |
| 1992 | Georges Charpak | France | “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber”[93] |
| 1993 | Russell Alan Hulse | United States | “for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation”[94] |
| Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. | United States | ||
| 1994 | Bertram Brockhouse | Canada | “for the development of neutron spectroscopy” and “for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter”[95] |
| Clifford Glenwood Shull | United States | “for the development of the neutron diffraction technique” and “for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter”[95] | |
| 1995 | Martin Lewis Perl | United States | “for the discovery of the tau lepton” and “for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics”[96] |
| Frederick Reines | United States | “for the detection of the neutrino” and “for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics”[96] | |
| 1996 | David Morris Lee | United States | “for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3”[97] |
| Douglas D. Osheroff | United States | ||
| Robert Coleman Richardson | United States | ||
| 1997 | Steven Chu | United States | “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”[98] |
| Claude Cohen-Tannoudji | France | ||
| William Daniel Phillips | United States | ||
| 1998 | Robert B. Laughlin | United States | “for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations”[99] |
| Horst Ludwig Störmer | Germany | ||
| Daniel Chee Tsui | United States | ||
| 1999 | Gerardus ‘t Hooft | Netherlands | “for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics”[100] |
| Martinus J. G. Veltman | Netherlands | ||
| 2000 | Zhores Ivanovich Alferov | Russia | “for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics”[101] |
| Herbert Kroemer | Germany | ||
| Jack St. Clair Kilby | United States | “for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit”[101] | |
| 2001 | Eric Allin Cornell | United States | “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates”[102] |
| Carl Edwin Wieman | United States | ||
| Wolfgang Ketterle | Germany | ||
| 2002 | Raymond Davis, Jr. | United States | “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos”[103] |
| Masatoshi Koshiba | Japan | ||
| Riccardo Giacconi | United States | “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources”[103] | |
| 2003 | Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov | Russia United States |
“for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids”[104] |
| Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg | Russia | ||
| Anthony James Leggett | United Kingdom United States |
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| 2004 | David J. Gross | United States | “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction”[105] |
| H. David Politzer | United States | ||
| Frank Wilczek | United States | ||
| 2005 | Roy J. Glauber | United States | “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence”[106] |
| John L. Hall | United States | “for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique”[106] | |
| Theodor W. Hänsch | Germany | ||
| 2006 | John C. Mather | United States | “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”[107] |
| George F. Smoot | United States | ||
| 2007 | Albert Fert | France | “for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance”[108] |
| Peter Grünberg | Germany | ||
| 2008 | Makoto Kobayashi | Japan | “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature” |
| Toshihide Maskawa | Japan | ||
| Yoichiro Nambu | United States | “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”[109] | |
| 2009 | Charles K. Kao | Hong Kong United Kingdom United States |
“for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication” |
| Willard S. Boyle | Canada United States |
“for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor” | |
| George E. Smith | United States | ||
| 2010 | Andre Geim | Netherlands | “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene” |
| Konstantin Novoselov | Russia United Kingdom |
