Nobel Prize in Physics

File:Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845--1923).jpg

Wilhelm Röntgen (1845 – 1923) was the first person to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, for his discovery of x-rays.

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. In 2007 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert (of France) and Peter Grünberg (of Germany) for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance; they share the prize amount of 10,000,000 SEK (slightly more than €1 million, or US$1.6 million).

Nomination and selection

Template:Tfd A maximum of three Nobel Laureates and two different works may be selected for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Compared with some other Nobel Prizes, the nomination and selection process for the Nobel Prize in Physics is long and rigorous. This is a key reason why these Nobel Prizes have grown in importance over the years to become the most important prizes in Physics.

These Nobel Laureates are selected by a committee that consists of five members elected by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In its first stage, several thousand people are asked to nominate candidates. These names are scrutinized and discussed by experts until only the winners remain. This slow and thorough process, insisted upon by Alfred Nobel, is arguably what gives the prize its importance.

Forms, which amount to a personal and exclusive invitation, are sent to about three thousand selected individuals to invite them to submit nominations. The names of the nominees are never publicly announced, and neither are they told that they have been considered for the Prize. Nomination records are sealed for fifty years. In practice some nominees do become known. It is also common for publicists to make such a claim, founded or not.

The nominations are screened by committee, and a list is produced of approximately two hundred preliminary candidates. This list is forwarded to selected experts in the field. They remove all but approximately fifteen names. The committee submits a report with recommendations to the appropriate institution.

While posthumous nominations are not permitted, awards can occur if the individual died in the months between the nomination and the decision of the prize committee.

The Nobel Prize in Physics requires that the significance of achievements being recognized is "tested by time." In practice it means that the lag between the discovery and the award is typically on the order of 20 years and can be much longer. For example, half of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for his work on stellar structure and evolution that was done during the 1930s. As a downside of this approach, not all scientists live long enough for their work to be recognized. Some important scientific discoveries are never considered for a Prize, as the discoverers may have died by the time the impact of their work is realized.

The Award

The Nobel Prize in Physics consists of a gold medallion (the "Nobel Prize Medal for Physics"), a diploma, and a monetary grant. The Nobel Prize Medals, which have been minted in Sweden since 1902, are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation. Their engraved designs are internationally-recognized symbols of the prestige of the Nobel Prize.

Front side (obverse) of the Nobel Prize® Medal for Physics presented to Edward Victor Appleton in 1947; photograph: David Monniaux, Appleton Tower, University of Edinburgh, 2005Template:Puic

The front side (obverse) of the Nobel Prize Medals for Physics, Chemistry, Literature, and Physiology or Medicine (for the "Swedish Prizes") features the same engraved profile of Alfred Nobel with his name abbreviated as "Alfr. Nobel" to the left of his profile and the dates of his birth and death to the right of it (in capital letters and Roman numerals).

The reverse side of the medals for Physics and Chemistry is "The medal of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences," which "represents Nature in the form of a goddess resembling Isis, emerging from the clouds and holding in her arms a cornucopia. The veil which covers her cold and austere face is held up by the Genius of Science" ("The Nobel Medal for Physics and Chemistry").

The grant is currently approximately 10 million SEK, slightly more than €1 million (US$1.6 million).

The Nobel Award Ceremony

The committee and institution serving as the selection board for the prize typically announce the names of the laureates in October. The prize is then awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. "The highlight of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm is when each Nobel Laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty the King of Sweden. ... Under the eyes of a watching world, the Nobel Laureate receives three things: a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the prize amount" ("What the Nobel Laureates Receive").

The Nobel Banquet is the banquet that is held every year in Stockholm City Hall in connection with the Nobel Prize.

List of Laureates

180 Nobel Laureates in Physics have been selected as of 2007. The following chart includes the Nobel Laureates in Physics since its inceptions in 1901.

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 Marie Curie	France 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	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	"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 Karl Ferdinand Braun	Italy Germany	"in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"
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 explanation 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	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 Paul Dirac	Austria United Kingdom	"for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory"
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 George Paget Thomson	United States United Kingdom	"for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals". See wave-particle duality.
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 Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton	United Kingdom Ireland	"for their pioneering work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles"
1952	Felix Bloch Edward Mills Purcell	Switzerland United States	"for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith"
1953	Frits Zernike	Netherlands	"for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope"
1954	Max Born	Germany 1939: 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)	People's 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 Čerenkov 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 Aleksandr Prokhorov	Soviet Union; Australia/Soviet Union
1965	Sin-Itiro Tomonaga Julian Schwinger Richard Phillips Feynman	Japan United States United States	"for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles"
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 Ivar Giaever	Japan; Norway/United States	"for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively"
	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 Ben Roy Mottelson Leo James Rainwater	Denmark Denmark United States	"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 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 Nevill Francis Mott John Hasbrouck van Vleck	United States United Kingdom United States	"for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems"
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 United States	"for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation"
1979	Sheldon Lee Glashow Abdus Salam Steven Weinberg	United States Pakistan 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"
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 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 Simon van der Meer	Italy 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	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 Heinrich Rohrer	West Germany Switzerland	"for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope"
1987	Johannes Georg Bednorz Karl Alexander Müller	West Germany Switzerland	"for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials"
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 Wolfgang Paul	United States West Germany	"for the development of the ion trap technique"
1990	Jerome I. Friedman Henry Way Kendall Richard E. Taylor	United States United States Canada	"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 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 Claude Cohen-Tannoudji William Daniel Phillips	United States France United States	"for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light" See Laser cooling.
1998	Robert B. Laughlin Horst Ludwig Störmer Daniel Chee Tsui	United States Germany United States	"for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations". See Quantum Hall effect.
1999	Gerardus 't Hooft Martinus J.G. Veltman	Netherlands	"for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics"
2000	Zhores Ivanovich Alferov Herbert Kroemer	Russia Germany	"for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics"
	Jack St. Clair Kilby	United States	"for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit"
2001	Eric Allin Cornell Wolfgang Ketterle Carl Edwin Wieman	United States Germany 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"
2002	Raymond Davis Jr. Masatoshi Koshiba	United States Japan	"for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"
	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 Anthony James Leggett	Russia Russia United Kingdom	"for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids"
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 Theodor W. Hänsch	United States Germany	"for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique"
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 Peter Grünberg	France Germany	"for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance"

Other references

• Friedman, Robert Marc (2001). The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science. New York & Stuttgart: VHPS (Times Books). ISBN 0716731037 (10). ISBN 978-0716731030 (13).
• Gill, Mohammad (March 10, 2005). "Prize and Prejudice". Chowk ("Voices that question, provoke and inspire"; ideas, identities and interactions"; "Where paths intersect"). Accessed November 5, 2007. ("Chowk is a platform to publish, discuss and debate writings on a variety of issues that are important to the people of India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries" ["About Chowk"].)
• Hillebrand, Claus D. (June 2002). "Nobel century: a biographical analysis of physics laureates". Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 27.2: 87-93.
• Lemmel, Birgitta. "The Nobel Prize Medals and the Medal for the Prize in Economics". nobelprize.org. Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2006. Accessed November 9, 2007. (An article on the history of the design of the medals featured on the official site of the Nobel Foundation.)
• "What the Nobel Laureates Receive". nobelprize.org. Copyright © Nobel Web AB 2007. Accessed November 9, 2007. (Featured link in "The Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies".)

See also

• Nobel laureates by country

External links

• "All Nobel Laureates in Physics" - Index webpage on the official site of the Nobel Foundation.
• "The Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies" – Official hyperlinked webpage of the Nobel Foundation.
• "The Nobel Prize in Physics" - Official webpage of the Nobel Foundation.
• "The Nobel Prize Medal for Physics and Chemistry" – Official webpage of the Nobel Foundation.

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