List of Nobel laureates in Physics facts for kids
Learn List of Nobel laureates in Physics facts for kids
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Year Image Laureate Country Rationale Ref 1901 Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) German Empire "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him" 1902 Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Netherlands "in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena" Pieter Zeeman (1865–1943) 1903 Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) France "for his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity" Pierre Curie (1859–1906) "for their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel" Marie Curie (1867–1934) Poland

( Russian Empire)

France 1904 Lord Rayleigh (1842–1919) 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 Lenard (1862–1947) German Empire "for his work on cathode rays" 1906 J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) United Kingdom "for his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases" 1907 Albert A. Michelson (1852–1931) United States "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid" 1908 Gabriel Lippmann (1845–1921) France "for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference" 1909 Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) Kingdom of Italy "for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy" Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918) German Empire 1910 Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923) Netherlands "for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids" 1911 Wilhelm Wien (1864–1928) German Empire "for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat" 1912 Gustaf Dalén (1869–1937) Sweden "for his invention of automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses and buoys" 1913 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853–1926) 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 (1879–1960) German Empire "For his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals", an important step in the development of X-ray spectroscopy. 1915 William Henry Bragg (1862–1942) United Kingdom "'For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays', an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography" Lawrence Bragg (1890–1971) United Kingdom 1916 zzzNot awarded due to World War I 1917 Charles Glover Barkla (1877–1944) United Kingdom "'For his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements', another important step in the development of X-ray spectroscopy" 1918 Max Planck (1858–1947) German Empire "for the services he rendered to the advancement of physics by his discovery of energy quanta" 1919 Johannes Stark (1874–1957) Germany "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields" 1920 Charles Édouard Guillaume (1861–1938) Switzerland "for the service he has rendered to precision measurements in physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel-steel alloys" 1921 Albert Einstein (1879–1955) Germany

Switzerland "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" 1922 Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Denmark "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them" 1923 Robert Andrews Millikan (1868–1953) United States "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect" 1924 Manne Siegbahn (1886–1978) Sweden "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy" 1925 James Franck (1882–1964) Germany "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom" Gustav Hertz (1887–1975) 1926 Jean Baptiste Perrin (1870–1942) France "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium" 1927 Arthur Compton (1892–1962) United States "for his discovery of the effect named after him" Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869–1959) United Kingdom "for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour" 1928 Owen Willans Richardson (1879–1959) United Kingdom "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him" 1929 Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie (1892–1987) France "for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons" 1930 C. V. Raman (1888–1970) India "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him" 1931 zzzNot awarded 1932 Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) 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 (1887–1961) Austria "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory" Paul Dirac (1902–1984) United Kingdom 1934 zzzNot awarded 1935 James Chadwick (1891–1974) United Kingdom "for the discovery of the neutron" 1936 Victor Francis Hess (1883–1964) Austria "for his discovery of cosmic radiation" Carl David Anderson (1905–1991) United States "for his discovery of the positron" 1937 Clinton Davisson (1881–1958) United States "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals" George Paget Thomson (1892–1975) United Kingdom 1938 Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) Kingdom of 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 (1901–1958) United States "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements" 1940 zzzNot awarded due to World War II 1941 zzzNot awarded due to World War II 1942 zzzNot awarded due to World War II 1943 Otto Stern (1888–1969) 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 (1898–1988) United States "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei" 1945 Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austria "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli principle" 1946 Percy Williams Bridgman (1882–1961) 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 (1892–1965) United Kingdom "for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer" 1948 Patrick Blackett (1897–1974) 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 (1907–1981) Japan "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces" 1950 C. F. Powell (1903–1969) United Kingdom "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method" 1951 John Cockcroft (1897–1967) United Kingdom "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles" Ernest Walton (1903–1995) Ireland 1952 Felix Bloch (1905–1983) United States "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith" Edward Mills Purcell (1912–1997) 1953 Frits Zernike (1888–1966) Netherlands "for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope" 1954 Max Born (1882–1970) West Germany "for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction" Walther Bothe (1891–1957) "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith" 1955 Willis Lamb (1913–2008) United States "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum" Polykarp Kusch (1911–1993) United States "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron" 1956 John Bardeen (1908–1991) United States "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect" Walter Houser Brattain (1902–1987) William Shockley (1910–1989) 1957 Lee Tsung-Dao (b. 1926) Republic of China "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles" Yang Chen-Ning (b. 1922) 1958 Pavel Cherenkov (1904–1990) Soviet Union "for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect" Ilya Frank (1908–1990) Igor Tamm (1895–1971) 1959 Emilio Segrè (1905–1989) United States "for their discovery of the antiproton" Owen Chamberlain (1920–2006) 1960 Donald A. Glaser (1926–2013) United States "for the invention of the bubble chamber" 1961 Robert Hofstadter (1915–1990) 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 Mössbauer (1929–2011) 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" 1962 Lev Landau (1908–1968) Soviet Union "for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium" 1963 Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) 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 (1906–1972) United States "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure" J. Hans D. Jensen (1907–1973) West Germany 1964 Nikolay Basov (1922–2001) 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" Alexander Prokhorov (1916–2002) Charles H. Townes (1915–2015) United States 1965 Richard Feynman (1918–1988) United States "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles" Julian Schwinger (1918–1994) Shin'ichirō Tomonaga (1906–1979) Japan 1966 Alfred Kastler (1902–1984) France "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms" 1967 Hans Bethe (1906–2005) United States "for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars" 1968 Luis Alvarez (1911–1988) 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 (1929–2019) United States "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions" 1970 Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Sweden "for fundamental work and discoveries in magneto-hydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics" Louis Néel (1904–2000) France "for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics" 1971 Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) United Kingdom "for his invention and development of the holographic method" 1972 John Bardeen (1908–1991) United States "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory" Leon Cooper (b. 1930) John Robert Schrieffer (1931–2019) 1973 Leo Esaki (b. 1925) Japan "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively" Ivar Giaever (b. 1929) United States Brian Josephson (b. 1940) 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 (1918–1984) 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" Antony Hewish (1924–2021) 1975 Aage Bohr (1922–2009) 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 (1926–2022) James Rainwater (1917–1986) United States 1976 Samuel C. C. Ting (b. 1936) United States "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind" Burton Richter (1931–2018) 1977 Philip Warren Anderson (1923–2020) United States "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems" Nevill Francis Mott (1905–1996) United Kingdom John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899–1980) United States 1978 Pyotr Kapitsa (1894–1984) Soviet Union "for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics" Arno Allan Penzias (1933–2024) United States "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation" Robert Woodrow Wilson (b. 1936) 1979 Sheldon Glashow (b. 1932) 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 (1926–1996) Pakistan Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) United States 1980 James Cronin (1931–2016) United States "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons" Val Logsdon Fitch (1923–2015) 1981 Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920–2017) United States "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy" Arthur Leonard Schawlow (1921–1999) Kai Siegbahn (1918–2007) Sweden "for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy" 1982 Kenneth G. Wilson (1936–2013) United States "for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions" 1983 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) United States "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars" William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995) "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 (b. 1934) 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 (1925–2011) Netherlands 1985 Klaus von Klitzing (b. 1943) West Germany "for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect" 1986 Ernst Ruska (1906–1988) West Germany "for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope" Gerd Binnig (b. 1947) "for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope" Heinrich Rohrer (1933–2013) Switzerland 1987 Georg Bednorz (b. 1950) West Germany "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials" K. Alex Müller (1927–2023) Switzerland 1988 Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) United States "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino" Melvin Schwartz (1932–2006) Jack Steinberger (1921–2020) 1989 Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (1915–2011) 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 (1922–2017) "for the development of the ion trap technique" Wolfgang Paul (1913–1993) West Germany 1990 Jerome I. Friedman (b. 1930) 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" Henry Way Kendall (1926–1999) Richard E. Taylor (1929–2018) Canada 1991 Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932–2007) 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 (1924–2010) France "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber" 1993 Russell Alan Hulse (b. 1950) United States "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation" Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. (b. 1941) 1994 Bertram Brockhouse (1918–2003) Canada "for the development of neutron spectroscopy" and "for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter" Clifford Shull (1915–2001) 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 (1927–2014) United States "for the discovery of the tau lepton" and "for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics" Frederick Reines (1918–1998) "for the detection of the neutrino" and "for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics" 1996 David Lee (b. 1931) United States "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3" Douglas D. Osheroff (b. 1945) Robert Coleman Richardson (1937–2013) 1997 Steven Chu (b. 1948) United States "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light." Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (b. 1933) France William Daniel Phillips (b. 1948) United States 1998 Robert B. Laughlin (b. 1950) United States "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations" Horst Ludwig Störmer (b. 1949) Germany Daniel C. Tsui (b. 1939) United States 1999 Gerard 't Hooft (b. 1946) Netherlands "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics" Martinus J. G. Veltman (1931–2021) 2000 Zhores Alferov (1930–2019) Russia "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics" Herbert Kroemer (1928–2024) Germany Jack Kilby (1923–2005) United States "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit" 2001 Eric Allin Cornell (b. 1961) 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" Carl Wieman (b. 1951) Wolfgang Ketterle (b. 1957) Germany 2002 Raymond Davis Jr. (1914–2006) United States "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos" Masatoshi Koshiba (1926–2020) Japan Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009) Russia Anthony James Leggett (b. 1938) United Kingdom

United States Hugh David Politzer (b. 1949) Frank Wilczek (b. 1951) John L. Hall (b. 1934) "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique" Theodor W. Hänsch (b. 1941) Germany 2006 John C. Mather (b. 1946) United States "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation" George Smoot (b. 1945) 2007 Albert Fert (b. 1938) France "for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance" Peter Grünberg (1939–2018) Germany 2008 Makoto Kobayashi (b. 1944) 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 (1940–2021) Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015) United States "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" 2009 Charles K. Kao (1933–2018) Hong Kong

United Kingdom

"for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication" Willard S. Boyle (1924–2011) United States "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor" George E. Smith (b. 1930) 2010 Andre Geim (b. 1958) United Kingdom "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene" Konstantin Novoselov (b. 1974) 2011 Saul Perlmutter (b. 1959) United States "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" Brian P. Schmidt (b. 1967) Australia Adam G. Riess (b. 1969) United States 2012 Serge Haroche (b. 1944) France "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems." David J. Wineland (b. 1944) United States 2013 François Englert (b. 1932) Belgium "for 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's Large Hadron Collider" Peter Higgs (1929–2024) United Kingdom 2014 Isamu Akasaki (1929–2021) Japan "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources" Hiroshi Amano (b. 1960) Shuji Nakamura (b. 1954) United States 2015 Takaaki Kajita (b. 1959) Japan "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass" Arthur B. McDonald (b. 1943) Canada 2016 David J. Thouless (1934–2019) United Kingdom "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter" Duncan Haldane (b. 1951) John M. Kosterlitz (b. 1943) United States

United Kingdom

2017 Rainer Weiss (b. 1932) United States "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves" Kip Thorne (b. 1940) Barry Barish (b. 1936) 2018 Arthur Ashkin (1922–2020) United States "for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics", in particular "for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" Gérard Mourou (b. 1944) France "for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics", in particular "for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses" Donna Strickland (b. 1959) Canada 2019 James Peebles (b. 1935) United States "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology" Michel Mayor (b. 1942) Switzerland "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star" Didier Queloz (b. 1966)

Switzerland

United Kingdom

2020 Roger Penrose (b. 1931) United Kingdom "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity" Reinhard Genzel (b. 1952) Germany "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy" Andrea M. Ghez (b. 1965) United States 2021 Syukuro Manabe (b. 1931) United States "for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming" Klaus Hasselmann (b. 1931) Germany Giorgio Parisi (b. 1948) Italy "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales" 2022 Alain Aspect (b. 1947) France "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science" John Clauser (b. 1942) United States Anton Zeilinger (b. 1945) Austria 2023 Anne L'Huillier (b. 1958)

France

Sweden

"for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter" Ferenc Krausz (b. 1962)

Austria

Hungary