List of Nobel laureates in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics (Swedish: Nobelpriset i fysik) 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 (or x-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.
182 Nobel Laureates in Physics have been selected as of 2008.
List of laureates
182 Nobel Laureates in Physics have been selected as of 2008. The following chart includes the Nobel Laureates in Physics since its inceptions in 1901.[1]
Year | Name | Country | Citation |
---|---|---|---|
1901 | Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen | Germany | "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays (or x-rays)" |
1902 | Hendrik Lorentz Pieter Zeeman |
Netherlands | "in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena". See Zeeman effect. |
1903 | Antoine Henri Becquerel | France | "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity" |
Pierre Curie | France | "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel" | |
Marie Curie | Poland France | ||
1904 | John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) | 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 | J. J. Thomson | United Kingdom | "in recognition of the great merits of 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". See Michelson-Morley experiment. |
1908 | Gabriel Lippmann | France | "for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference" |
1909 | Guglielmo Marconi | Italy | "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy" |
Karl Ferdinand Braun | Germany | ||
1910 | Johannes Diderik van der Waals | Netherlands | "For his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids." See van der Waals force. |
1911 | Wilhelm Wien | Germany | "for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat." |
1912 | Nils Gustaf Dalén | Sweden | "invention of automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses and light-buoys." |
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" |
1914 | Max von Laue | Germany | "For his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals." |
1915 | William Henry Bragg William Lawrence Bragg |
Australia United Kingdom |
"For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays." |
1916 | no award | prize purse allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section. | |
1917 | Charles Glover Barkla | United Kingdom | "For his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements." |
1918 | Max Planck | Germany | "In recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta." See Planck constant. |
1919 | Johannes Stark | Germany | "For his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields." |
1920 | Charles Édouard Guillaume | Switzerland | "in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys" |
1921 | Albert Einstein | Germany Switzerland |
"for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" |
1922 | Niels Bohr | Denmark | "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them" |
1923 | Robert Andrews Millikan | United States | "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect" |
1924 | Manne Siegbahn | Sweden | "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy" |
1925 | James Franck Gustav Hertz |
Germany | "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom" |
1926 | Jean Baptiste Perrin | France | "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium" |
1927 | Arthur Holly Compton | United States | "for his discovery of the effect named after him". See Compton effect. |
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson | United Kingdom | "for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour". See cloud chamber. | |
1928 | Owen Willans Richardson | United Kingdom | "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him" |
1929 | Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie | France | "for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons". See De Broglie hypothesis. |
1930 | Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman | British India | "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him" |
1931 | no award | prize purse allocated to the Special Fund for this prize. | |
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" |
1933 | Erwin Schrödinger | Austria | "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory" |
Paul Dirac | United Kingdom | ||
1934 | no award | prize purse allocated half to the Main Fund and half to the Special Fund for this prize. | |
1935 | James Chadwick | United Kingdom | "for the discovery of the neutron" |
1936 | Victor Francis Hess | Austria | "for his discovery of cosmic radiation" |
Carl David Anderson | United States | "for his discovery of the positron" | |
1937 | Clinton Joseph Davisson | United States | "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals". See wave-particle duality. |
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" |
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" |
1940 | no award | prize purse allocated half to the Main Fund and half to the Special Fund for this prize. | |
1941 | |||
1942 | |||
1943 | Otto Stern | Germany United States |
"for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton" |
1944 | Isidor Isaac Rabi | United States | "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei" |
1945 | Wolfgang Pauli | Austria | "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli principle" |
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" |
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" |
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" |
1949 | Hideki Yukawa | Japan | "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces". See Yukawa potential. |
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" |
1951 | John Douglas Cockcroft | United Kingdom | "for their pioneering work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles" |
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton | Ireland | ||
1952 | Felix Bloch | Switzerland | "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith" |
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" |
1954 | Max Born | West Germany United Kingdom |
"for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction" |
Walther Bothe | West Germany | "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith" | |
1955 | Willis Eugene Lamb | United States | "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum". See Lamb shift. |
Polykarp Kusch | United States | "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron" | |
1956 | William Bradford Shockley John Bardeen Walter Houser Brattain |
United States | "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect" |
1957 | Chen Ning Yang (楊振寧) Tsung-Dao Lee (李政道) |
Republic of China United States |
"for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles" |
1958 | Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov Il'ya Frank Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm |
Soviet Union | "for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov-Vavilov effect" |
1959 | Emilio Gino Segrè Owen Chamberlain |
United States | "for their discovery of the antiproton" |
1960 | Donald Arthur Glaser | United States | "for the invention of the bubble chamber" |
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" |
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". See Mössbauer effect. | |
1962 | Lev Davidovich Landau | Soviet Union | "for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium" |
1963 | Eugene Paul Wigner | Hungary 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" |
Maria Goeppert-Mayer J. Hans D. Jensen |
United States West Germany |
"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure" | |
1964 | Charles Hard Townes | United States | "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" |
Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov | Soviet Union | ||
Aleksandr Prokhorov | Australia Soviet Union | ||
1965 | Sin-Itiro Tomonaga | Japan | "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles" |
Julian Schwinger Richard Phillips Feynman |
United States | ||
1966 | Alfred Kastler | France | "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms" |
1967 | Hans Albrecht Bethe | United States | "for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars" |
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" |
1969 | Murray Gell-Mann | United States | "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions". See Eightfold way. |
1970 | Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén | Sweden | "for fundamental work and discoveries in magneto-hydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics" |
Louis Eugene Félix Néel | France | "for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics" | |
1971 | Dennis Gabor | United Kingdom | "for his invention and development of the holographic method" |
1972 | John Bardeen Leon Neil Cooper John Robert Schrieffer |
United States | "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory" |
1973 | Leo Esaki | Japan | "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" |
Ivar Giaever | Norway United States | ||
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" | |
1974 | Martin Ryle Antony Hewish |
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" |
1975 | Aage Niels 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" |
Ben Roy Mottelson | Denmark United States | ||
Leo James Rainwater | United States | ||
1976 | Burton Richter Samuel Chao Chung Ting |
United States | "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind". In other words: for discovery of the J/Ψ particle as it confirmed the idea that baryonic matter (such as the nuclei of atoms) is made out of quarks. |
1977 | Philip Warren Anderson | United States | "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems" |
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" |
Arno Allan Penzias Robert Woodrow Wilson |
United States | "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation" | |
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" |
Abdus Salam | Pakistan | ||
Steven Weinberg | United States | ||
1980 | James Watson Cronin Val Logsdon Fitch |
United States | "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons". See CP-violation. |
1981 | Nicolaas Bloembergen Arthur Leonard Schawlow |
United States | "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy" |
Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn | Sweden | "for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy" | |
1982 | Kenneth G. Wilson | United States | "for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions" |
1983 | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | India United States |
"for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". See Chandrasekhar limit. |
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" | |
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" |
Simon van der Meer | Netherlands | ||
1985 | Klaus von Klitzing | West Germany | "for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect" |
1986 | Ernst Ruska | West Germany | "for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope" |
Gerd Binnig | West Germany | "for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope" | |
Heinrich Rohrer | Switzerland | ||
1987 | Johannes Georg Bednorz | West Germany | "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials" |
Karl Alexander Müller | Switzerland | ||
1988 | Leon Max Lederman Melvin Schwartz Jack Steinberger |
United States | "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino" |
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" |
Hans Georg Dehmelt | West Germany United States |
"for the development of the ion trap technique" | |
Wolfgang Paul | West Germany | ||
1990 | Jerome I. Friedman Henry Way Kendall |
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" |
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" |
1992 | Georges Charpak | France | "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber" |
1993 | Russell Alan Hulse Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. |
United States | "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation" |
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" |
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" | |
1995 | Martin Lewis Perl | United States | "for the discovery of the tau lepton" and "for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics" |
Frederick Reines | United States | "for the detection of the neutrino" and "for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics" | |
1996 | David Morris Lee Douglas D. Osheroff Robert Coleman Richardson |
United States | "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3" |
1997 | Steven Chu | United States | "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light" See Laser cooling. |
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". See Quantum Hall effect. |
Horst Ludwig Störmer | Germany | ||
Daniel Chee Tsui | United States | ||
1999 | Gerardus 't Hooft Martinus J.G. Veltman |
Netherlands | "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics" |
2000 | Zhores Ivanovich Alferov | Russia | "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics" |
Herbert Kroemer | Germany | ||
Jack St. Clair Kilby | United States | "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit" | |
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" |
Wolfgang Ketterle | Germany | ||
Carl Edwin Wieman | United States | ||
2002 | Raymond Davis Jr. | United States | "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos" |
Masatoshi Koshiba | Japan | ||
Riccardo Giacconi | United States | "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources" | |
2003 | Alexei Alexeevich Abrikosov Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg |
Russia | "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids" |
Anthony James Leggett | United Kingdom | ||
2004 | David J. Gross H. David Politzer Frank Wilczek |
United States | "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction" |
2005 | Roy J. Glauber | United States | "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence" |
John L. Hall | United States | "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique" | |
Theodor W. Hänsch | Germany | ||
2006 | John C. Mather George F. Smoot |
United States | "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation" |
2007 | Albert Fert | France | "for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance" |
Peter Grünberg | Germany | ||
2008 | Yoichiro Nambu | Japan United States |
"for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics, which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature" |
Makoto Kobayashi Toshihide Maskawa |
Japan |
See also
References
- General
- "All Nobel Laureates in Physics". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
- "Nobel Prize winners by category (physics)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
- Specific
- ^ "All Nobel Laureates in Physics", Nobel Foundation, accessed November 5, 2007. All of the Nobel citations provided in the chart are quoted from the official site of the Nobel Foundation.
External links
- Nobel Prize – Official webpage of the Nobel Foundation