Awards & Winners

Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a German, "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays." This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and widely regarded as the most prestigious award that a scientist can receive in physics. It is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
Date Established : 1901

Check all the winners of Nobel Prize in Physics presented under Nobel Prize since 1901 .


Peter Higgs, François Englert

(\u201Cfor the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN\u2019s Large Hadron Collider\u201D)

Nominations 2013 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Serge Haroche, David J. Wineland

(for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.)

Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt

(for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae)

Andre Geim, Konstantin Novoselov

(for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene)

Nominations 2010 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Charles K. Kao

(for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication)

Nominations 2009 »

Nominee Nominated Work

George E. Smith, Willard Boyle

(for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor)

Nominations 2009 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Yoichiro Nambu

(for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics)

Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa

(for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature)

Peter Grünberg, Albert Fert

(for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance)

George Smoot, John C. Mather

(for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation)

Nominations 2006 »

Nominee Nominated Work

John L. Hall, Theodor W. Hänsch

(for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique)

Roy J. Glauber

(for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence)

David Gross, Hugh David Politzer, Frank Wilczek

(for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction)

Nominations 2004 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Vitaly Ginzburg, Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov, Anthony James Leggett

(for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids)

Riccardo Giacconi

(for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources)

Nominations 2002 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Raymond Davis, Jr., Masatoshi Koshiba

(for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos)

Nominations 2002 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Eric Allin Cornell, Carl Wieman, Wolfgang Ketterle

(for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates)

Nominations 2001 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Jack Kilby

(for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit)

Zhores Alferov, Herbert Kroemer

(for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics)

Gerard 't Hooft, Martinus J. G. Veltman

(for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics)

Nominations 1999 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Daniel C. Tsui, Horst Ludwig Störmer, Robert B. Laughlin

(for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations)

Nominations 1998 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Steven Chu, William Daniel Phillips, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

(for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light)

David Lee, Douglas Osheroff, Robert Coleman Richardson

(for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3)

Nominations 1996 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Martin Lewis Perl

(for the discovery of the tau lepton)

Frederick Reines

(for the detection of the neutrino)

Clifford Shull

(for the development of the neutron diffraction technique)

Nominations 1994 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Bertram Brockhouse

(for the development of neutron spectroscopy)

Nominations 1994 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., Russell Alan Hulse

(for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation)

Georges Charpak

(for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber)

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

(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)

Nominations 1991 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Jerome Isaac Friedman, Henry Way Kendall, Richard E. Taylor

(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)

Nominations 1990 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr.

(for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks)

Wolfgang Paul, Hans Georg Dehmelt

(for the development of the ion trap technique)

Leon M. Lederman, Jack Steinberger, Melvin Schwartz

(for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino)

Nominations 1988 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Johannes Georg Bednorz, Karl Alexander Müller

(for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials)

Nominations 1987 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Heinrich Rohrer, Gerd Binnig

(for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope)

Nominations 1986 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Ernst Ruska

(for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope)

Nominations 1986 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Klaus von Klitzing

(for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect)

Nominations 1985 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer

(for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction.)

Nominations 1984 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

(for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars.)

Nominations 1983 »

Nominee Nominated Work

William Alfred Fowler

(for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe.)

Nominations 1983 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Kenneth G. Wilson

(for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions.)

Nominations 1982 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Arthur Leonard Schawlow, Nicolaas Bloembergen

(for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy.)

Nominations 1981 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Kai Siegbahn

(for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy.)

Nominations 1981 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Val Logsdon Fitch, James Cronin

(for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons.)

Nominations 1980 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam

(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.)

Nominations 1979 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Robert Woodrow Wilson, Arno Allan Penzias

(for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation)

Nominations 1978 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Pyotr Kapitsa

(for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics)

Nominations 1978 »

Nominee Nominated Work

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Nevill Francis Mott, Philip Warren Anderson

(for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems)

Nominations 1977 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Samuel C. C. Ting, Burton Richter

(for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind)

Nominations 1976 »

Nominee Nominated Work

James Rainwater, Ben Roy Mottelson, Aage Bohr

(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)

Nominations 1975 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Antony Hewish, Martin Ryle

(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)

Nominations 1974 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Brian Josephson

(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 effects)

Nominations 1973 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Ivar Giaever, Leo Esaki

(for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively)

Nominations 1973 »

Nominee Nominated Work

John Bardeen, John Robert Schrieffer, Leon Cooper

(for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory)

Nominations 1972 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Dennis Gabor

(for his invention and development of the holographic method)

Nominations 1971 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Louis Néel

(for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics)

Nominations 1970 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Hannes Alfvén

(for fundamental work and discoveries in magnetohydro- dynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics)

Nominations 1970 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Murray Gell-Mann

(for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions)

Nominations 1969 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Luis Walter Alvarez

(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)

Nominations 1968 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Hans Bethe

(for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars)

Nominations 1967 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Alfred Kastler

(for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms)

Nominations 1966 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger

(for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles)

Nominations 1965 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Nikolay Basov, Alexander Prokhorov, Charles Hard Townes

(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)

Nominations 1964 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Eugene Wigner

(for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles)

Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen

(for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure)

Lev Landau

(for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium)

Nominations 1962 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Robert Hofstadter

(for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons)

Nominations 1961 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Rudolf Mössbauer

(for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name)

Nominations 1961 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Donald A. Glaser

(for the invention of the bubble chamber)

Nominations 1960 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Owen Chamberlain, Emilio G. Segrè

(for their discovery of the antiproton)

Nominations 1959 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Igor Tamm, Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank

(for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect)

Nominations 1958 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Chen-Ning Yang, Tsung-Dao Lee

(for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles)

John Bardeen, William Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain

(for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect)

Nominations 1956 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Polykarp Kusch

(for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron)

Willis Lamb

(for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum)

Walther Bothe

(for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith)

Max Born

(for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction)

Frits Zernike

(for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope.)

Nominations 1953 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Edward Mills Purcell, Felix Bloch

(for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith.)

John Cockcroft, Ernest Walton

(for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles.)

Nominations 1951 »

Nominee Nominated Work

C. F. Powell

(for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method.)

Hideki Yukawa

(for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces)

Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett

(for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation)

Edward Victor Appleton

(for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer.)

Nominations 1947 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Percy Williams Bridgman

(for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics)

Wolfgang Pauli

(for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle.)

Nominations 1945 »

Nominee Nominated Work

Isidor Isaac Rabi

(for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei)

Otto Stern

(for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton.)

Ernest Lawrence

(for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements.)

Enrico Fermi

(for demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutron)

Clinton Davisson, George Paget Thomson

(for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals)

Victor Francis Hess

(for his discovery of cosmic radiation.)

Carl David Anderson

(for his discovery of the positron.)

James Chadwick

(for the discovery of the neutron)

Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac

(for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory)

Werner Heisenberg

(for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.)

C. V. Raman

(for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him.)

Louis de Broglie

(for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons)

Owen Willans Richardson

(for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him.)

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson

(for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour)

Arthur Compton

(for his discovery of the effect named after him)

Jean Baptiste Perrin

(for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium)

Gustav Ludwig Hertz, James Franck

(for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom)

Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn

(for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy.)

Robert Andrews Millikan

(for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect)

Niels Henrik David Bohr

(for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them.)

Albert Einstein

(For his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect)

Charles Édouard Guillaume

(in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys)

Johannes Stark

(for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields.)

Max Planck

(in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta)

Charles Glover Barkla

(for his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements)

William Lawrence Bragg, William Henry Bragg

(for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays)

Max von Laue

(for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.)

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

(for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium)

Nils Gustaf Dalén

(for his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys.)

Wilhelm Wien

(for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat)

Johannes Diderik van der Waals

(for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids)

Karl Ferdinand Braun, Guglielmo Marconi

(in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.)

Gabriel Lippmann

(for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference)

Albert Abraham Michelson

(for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid.)

Joseph John Thomson

(in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases.)

Philipp Lenard

(for his work on cathode rays)

John William Strutt

(for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies)

Antoine Henri Becquerel

(in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity.)

Marie Curie, Pierre Curie

(in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.)

Pieter Zeeman, Hendrik Lorentz

(in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena)

Wilhelm Röntgen

(in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him)