Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to 178 persons since 1901.

1901
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (Prussia, afterwards Germany)
"in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays (or x-rays)"

1902
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (The Netherlands) and Pieter Zeeman (The Netherlands)
"in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena"

1903
Antoine Henri Becquerel (France)
"in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity"

Pierre (France) and Marie Curie (Poland/France)
"in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"

1904
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (UK)
"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
Sir Joseph John Thomson (UK)
"in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases"

1907
Albert Abraham Michelson (Poland/US)
"for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid".

1908
Gabriel Lippmann (Luxembourg)
"for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference"

1909
Guglielmo Marconi (Italy) and Karl Ferdinand Braun (Germany) (Germany)
"in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"

1910
Johannes Diderik van der Waals (The Netherlands)
"For his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids."

1911
Wilhelm Wien (Germany)
"For his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat."

1912
Nils Gustaf Dalén (Sweden)
"For his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys."

1913
Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes (The 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
Sir William Henry Bragg (England, UK) and William Lawrence Bragg (South Australia, afterwards Australia)
"For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays."

1916
(The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.)

1917
Charles Glover Barkla (England, UK)
"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."

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 Edouard Guillaume (Switzerland/France)
"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)
"for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his explanation of the photoelectric effect"

1922
Niels Henrik David Bohr (Denmark)
"for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them"

1923
Robert Andrews Millikan (USA)
"for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect"

1924
Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn (Sweden)
"for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy"

1925
James Franck (Germany) and Gustav Ludwig 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 (USA)
"for his discovery of the effect named after him".
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (Scotland, UK)
"for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour".

1928
Owen Willans Richardson (England, UK)
"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".

1930
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (India)
"for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him"

1931
(The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.)

1932
Werner Karl 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) and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (England, UK)
"for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory"

1934
(The prize money was with ⅓ allocated to the Main Fund and with ⅔ to the Special Fund of this prize section.)

1935
James Chadwick (England, UK)
"for the discovery of the neutron"

1936
Victor Franz Hess (Austria)
"for his discovery of cosmic radiation"

Carl David Anderson (USA)
"for his discovery of the positron"

1937
Clinton Joseph Davisson (USA) and George Paget Thomson (England, UK)
"for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals".

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

1940, 1941, 1942
The prize money was with ⅓ allocated to the Main Fund and with ⅔ to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1943
Otto Stern (Germany)
"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 (Galicia, Austria-Hungary, now Poland)
"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 (USA)
"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
Sir Edward Victor Appleton (England, UK)
"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 (England, UK)
"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".

1950
Cecil Frank Powell (England, UK)
"for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method"

1951
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft (England, UK) and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (Republic of Ireland)
"for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles"

1952
Felix Bloch (Switzerland/USA) and Edward Mills Purcell (USA)
"for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith"

1953
Frits (Frederik) Zernike (The Netherlands)
"for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope"

1954
Max Born (Germany)
"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 (USA)
"for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum". See: Lamb shift
Polykarp Kusch (Germany/USA)
"for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron"

1956
William Bradford Shockley (England, UK/USA), John Bardeen (USA), and Walter Houser Brattain (USA)
"for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect"

1957
Chen Ning Yang (China/USA) and Tsung-Dao Lee (China/USA)
"for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles"

1958
Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov (Soviet Union), Il'ia Frank (Soviet Union), and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (Soviet Union)
"for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov-Vavilov effect"

1959
Emilio Gino Segre (USA) and Owen Chamberlain (USA)
"for their discovery of the antiproton"

1960
Donald Arthur Glaser (USA)
"for the invention of the bubble chamber"

1961
Robert Hofstadter (USA)
"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 (Germany)
"for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name".

1962
Lev Davidovich Landau (Soviet Union)
"for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium"

1963
Eugene Paul Wigner (Hungary)
"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 (Katowice, then in Germany, now Poland) and J. Hans D. Jensen (Germany)
"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"

1964
Charles Hard Townes (USA), Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov (Soviet Union), and Aleksandr Prokhorov (Australia/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"

1965
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (Japan), Julian Schwinger (USA), and Richard Phillips Feynman (USA)
"for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles"

1966
Alfred Kastler (Guebwiller, then in Germany, now France)
"for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms"

1967
Hans Albrecht Bethe (Strasbourg, then in Germany, now France)
"for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars"

1968
Luis Walter Alvarez (USA)
"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 (USA)
"for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions".

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 (Hungary)
"for his invention and development of the holographic method"

1972
John Bardeen (USA), Leon Neil Cooper (USA), and John Robert Schrieffer (USA)
"for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory"

1973
Leo Esaki (Japan/USA) and Ivar Giaever (Norway)
"for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively"
Brian David Josephson (Wales, UK)
"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
Sir Martin Ryle (England, UK) and Antony Hewish (England, UK)
"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), Ben Roy Mottelson (USA), and Leo James Rainwater (USA)
"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"

1976
Burton Richter (USA) and Samuel Chao Chung Ting (USA)
"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 (USA), Sir Nevill Francis Mott (England, UK), and John Hasbrouck van Vleck (USA)
"for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems"

1978
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (Пётр Леонидович Капица) (Russia)
"for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics"
Arno Allan Penzias (Germany/USA) and Robert Woodrow Wilson (USA)
"for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation"

1979
Sheldon Lee Glashow (USA), Abdus Salam (Pakistan), and Steven Weinberg (USA)
"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"

1980
James Watson Cronin (USA) and Val Logsdon Fitch (USA)
"for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons".

1981
Nicolaas Bloembergen (The Netherlands) and Arthur Leonard Schawlow (USA)
"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 (USA)
"for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions"

1983
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (India)
"for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars".
William Alfred Fowler (USA)
"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) and Simon van der Meer (The Netherlands)
"for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction"

1985
Klaus von Klitzing (Poland/Germany)
"for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect"

1986
Ernst Ruska (Germany)
"for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope"
Gerd Binnig (Germany) and Heinrich Rohrer(Switzerland)
"for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope"

1987
Johannes Georg Bednorz (Germany) and Karl Alexander Müller (Switzerland)
"for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials"
1988
Leon Max Lederman (USA), Melvin Schwartz (USA), and Jack Steinberger (Germany/USA)
"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 (USA)
"for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks"
Hans Georg Dehmelt (Germany/USA) and Wolfgang Paul (Germany)
"for the development of the ion trap technique"

1990
Jerome Isaac Friedman (USA), Henry Way Kendall (USA), and Richard Edward Taylor (Canada/USA)
"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"

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 (USA) and Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. (USA)
"for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation"

1994
Both
"for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter"
Bertram Neville Brockhouse (Canada)
"for the development of neutron spectroscopy"
Clifford Glenwood Shull (USA)
"for the development of the neutron diffraction technique"

1995
Both
"for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics"
Martin Lewis Perl (USA)
"for the discovery of the tau lepton"
Frederick Reines (USA)
"for the detection of the neutrino"

1996
David Morris Lee (USA), Douglas Dean Osheroff (USA), and Robert Coleman Richardson (USA)
"for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3"

1997
Steven Chu(USA), Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (France), and William Daniel Phillips (USA)
"for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light"

1998
Robert B. Laughlin (USA), Horst Ludwig Störmer (Germany), and Daniel Chee Tsui (China/USA)
"for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations".

1999
Gerardus 't Hooft (The Netherlands) and Martinus J.G. Veltman (The Netherlands)
"for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics"

2000
Zhores Ivanovich Alferov (Belarus/Soviet Union) and Herbert Kroemer (USA)
"for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics"
Jack St. Clair Kilby (USA)
"for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit"

2001
Eric Allin Cornell (USA), Wolfgang Ketterle (Germany), and Carl Edwin Wieman (USA)
"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates"

2002
Raymond Davis Jr. (USA) and Masatoshi Koshiba (Japan)
"for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"
Riccardo Giacconi (Italy/USA)
"for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources"

2003
Alexei Alexeevich Abrikosov (Russia), Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (Russia) and Anthony James Leggett (England, UK)
"for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids"

2004
David J. Gross (USA/Israel), H. David Politzer (USA) and Frank Wilczek (USA)
"for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction"

2005
Roy J. Glauber (USA)
"for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence"
John L. Hall (USA) and Theodor W. Hänsch (Germany)
"for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique"

2006
John C. Mather (USA) and George F. Smoot (USA)
"for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"