According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Prize in Physics was to go to “the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics.” The prize has been awarded yearly apart from 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941 and 1942.
Here is the complete checklist of winners:
2022: American physicist John Clauser, French physicist Alain Aspect and Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger every shared the 2022 prize “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science,” according to the Nobel Prize organization. Their work demonstrated that what Einstein so famously dubbed “spooky motion at a distance” is real and laid the groundwork for early quantum computers.
2021: The 2021 Nobel prize went to three scientists whose work alerted the world to the dangers of climate change. The prize was awarded for “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complicated bodily techniques.” Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann shared one-half of the prize “for the bodily modeling of Earth’s local weather, quantifying variability and reliably predicting international warming” while Giorgio Parisi won the other half “for the invention of the interaction of dysfunction and fluctuations in bodily techniques from atomic to planetary scales.”
2020: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided amongst a trio of black hole researchers. One half of the award went to Roger Penrose, “for the invention that black gap formation is a sturdy prediction of the final idea of relativity”, while Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez jointly shared the other half “for the invention of a supermassive compact object on the centre of our galaxy”
2019: Canadian-American James Peebles of Princeton University received one-half of the Nobel “for theoretical discoveries in bodily cosmology,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. The other half of the prize was awarded jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, “for the invention of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star,” the Academy said. Mayor is a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and Queloz is at both the University of Geneva and the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
Together, the trio won the Nobel “for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos,” the Academy said.
2018: Arthur Ashkin was awarded one half of the prize, and the other half was awarded jointly to Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou, “for groundbreaking innovations in the sphere of laser physics.” This was the first time in 55 years that a woman was part of the Nobel Prize in physics. [Read more about the 2018 prize and Nobel Laureates]
2017: Half of the 9 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million) award went to Rainer Weiss of MIT. The other half was shared jointly to Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of Caltech. The prize honored the trio’s “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the remark of gravitational waves,” according to Nobelprize.org. The three scientists were integral in the first detection of the ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. The waves in this case came from the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
2016: One half was awarded to David J. Thouless, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and the other half to F. Duncan M. Haldane, Princeton University, and J. Michael Kosterlitz, Brown University, Providence. Their theoretical discoveries opened the door to a weird world where matter can take on strange states. According to the Nobel Foundation: “Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for brand spanking new and unique phases of matter. Many individuals are hopeful of future purposes in each supplies science and electronics.”
2015: Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for showing the metamorphosis of neutrinos, which revealed that the subatomic particles have mass and opened up a new realm in particle physics.
2014: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for their invention of an energy-efficient light source: blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
2013: Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom and François Englert of Belgium, two of the scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson nearly 50 years ago. [Related: Higgs Boson Physicists Snag Nobel Prize]
2012: French physicist Serge Haroche and American physicist David Wineland, for their pioneering research in quantum optics.
2011: One half awarded to Saul Perlmutter, the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess, “for the invention of the accelerating enlargement of the Universe via observations of distant supernovae.”
2010: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, “for groundbreaking experiments relating to the two-dimensional materials graphene.”
2009: Charles K. Kao, “for groundbreaking achievements regarding the transmission of sunshine in fibers for optical communication,” and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor.”
2008: Yoichiro Nambu, “for the invention of the mechanism of spontaneous damaged symmetry in subatomic physics,” and Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa, “for the invention of the origin of the damaged symmetry which predicts the existence of at the least three households of quarks in nature.”
2007: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, “for the invention of Giant Magnetoresistance”
2006: John C. Mather and George F. Smoot, “for his or her discovery of the blackbody kind and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.”
2005: Roy J. Glauber, “for his contribution to the quantum idea of optical coherence,” and John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch, “for his or her contributions to the event of laser-based precision spectroscopy, together with the optical frequency comb method.”
2004: David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, “for the invention of asymptotic freedom in the speculation of the robust interplay.”
2003: Alexei A. Abrikosov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg and Anthony J. Leggett, “for pioneering contributions to the speculation of superconductors and superfluids.”
2002: Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba, “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in explicit for the detection of cosmic neutrinos,” and Riccardo Giacconi, “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the invention of cosmic X-ray sources.”
2001: Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E. Wieman, “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early elementary research of the properties of the condensates.”
2000: Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer, “for creating semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics,” and Jack S. Kilby “for his half in the invention of the built-in circuit.”
1999: Gerardus ‘t Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, “for elucidating the quantum construction of electroweak interactions in physics.”
1998: Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, “for his or her discovery of a brand new type of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.”
1997: Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, “for growth of strategies to chill and lure atoms with laser mild.”
1996: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson, “for his or her discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.”
1995: Martin L. Perl, “for the invention of the tau lepton,” and Frederick Reines, “for the detection of the neutrino.”
1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, “for the event of neutron spectroscopy,” and Clifford G. Shull, “for the event of the neutron diffraction method.”
1993: Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr., “for the invention of a brand new sort of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new prospects for the research of gravitation.”
1992: Georges Charpak, “for his invention and growth of particle detectors, in explicit the multiwire proportional chamber.”
1991: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, “for locating that strategies developed for finding out order phenomena in easy techniques may be generalized to extra complicated types of matter, in explicit to liquid crystals and polymers.”
1990: Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor, “for his or her pioneering investigations regarding deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and sure neutrons, which have been of important significance for the event of the quark mannequin in particle physics.”
1989: Norman F. Ramsey, “for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields technique and its use in the hydrogen maser and different atomic clocks,” and Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul, “for the event of the ion lure method.”
1988: Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, “for the neutrino beam technique and the demonstration of the doublet construction of the leptons via the invention of the muon neutrino.”
1987: J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alexander Müller, “for his or her vital break-through in the invention of superconductivity in ceramic supplies.”
1986: Ernst Ruska, “for his elementary work in electron optics, and for the design of the primary electron microscope,” and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, “for his or her design of the scanning tunneling microscope.”
1985: Klaus von Klitzing, “for the invention of the quantized Hall impact”.
1984: Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, “for his or her decisive contributions to the big mission, which led to the invention of the sphere particles W and Z, communicators of weak interplay.”
1983: Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, “for his theoretical research of the bodily processes of significance to the construction and evolution of the celebrities,” and William Alfred Fowler, “for his theoretical and experimental research of the nuclear reactions of significance in the formation of the chemical components in the universe.”
1982: Kenneth G. Wilson, “for his idea for vital phenomena in reference to section transitions.”
1981: Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, “for his or her contribution to the event of laser spectroscopy,” and Kai M. Siegbahn, “for his contribution to the event of high-resolution electron spectroscopy.”
1980: James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch, “for the invention of violations of elementary symmetry ideas in the decay of impartial Ok-mesons.”
1979: Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, “for his or her contributions to the speculation of the unified weak and electromagnetic interplay between elementary particles, together with, inter alia, the prediction of the weak impartial present.”
1978: Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, “for his fundamental innovations and discoveries in the world of low-temperature physics,” and Arno Allan Penzias, Robert Woodrow Wilson “for his or her discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation.”
1977: Philip Warren Anderson, Sir Nevill Francis Mott and John Hasbrouck van Vleck, “for his or her elementary theoretical investigations of the digital construction of magnetic and disordered techniques.”
1976: Burton Richter and Samuel Chao Chung Ting, “for his or her pioneering work in the invention of a heavy elementary particle of a brand new sort.”
1975: Aage Niels Bohr, Ben Roy Mottelson and Leo James Rainwater, “for the invention of the connection between collective movement and particle movement in atomic nuclei and the event of the speculation of the construction of the atomic nucleus primarily based on this connection.”
1974: Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish, “for his or her pioneering analysis in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and innovations, in explicit of the aperture synthesis method, and Hewish for his decisive function in the invention of pulsars.”
1973: Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, for “for his or her experimental discoveries relating to tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively,” and Brian David Josephson, “for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent via a tunnel barrier, in explicit these phenomena that are commonly known as the Josephson results.”
1972: John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer, “for his or her collectively developed idea of superconductivity, normally referred to as the BCS-theory.”
1971: Dennis Gabor, “for his invention and growth of the holographic technique.”
1970: Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén, “for elementary work and discoveries in magnetohydro- dynamics with fruitful purposes in totally different elements of plasma physics,” and Louis Eugène Félix Néel, “for elementary work and discoveries regarding antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to vital purposes in strong state physics.”
1969: Murray Gell-Mann, “for his contributions and discoveries regarding the classification of elementary particles and their interactions.”
1968: Luis Walter Alvarez, “for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in explicit the invention of a lot of resonance states, made attainable via his growth of the strategy of utilizing hydrogen bubble chamber and information evaluation.”
1967: Hans Albrecht Bethe, “for his contributions to the speculation of nuclear reactions, particularly his discoveries regarding the power manufacturing in stars.”
1966: Alfred Kastler, “for the invention and growth of optical strategies for finding out Hertzian resonances in atoms.”
1965: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard P. Feynman, “for his or her elementary work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing penalties for the physics of elementary particles.”
1964: Charles Hard Townes, “for elementary work in the sphere of quantum electronics, which has led to the development of oscillators and amplifiers primarily based on the maser-laser precept,” and Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, “for elementary work in the sphere of quantum electronics, which has led to the development of oscillators and amplifiers primarily based on the maser-laser precept.”
1963: Eugene Paul Wigner, “for his contributions to the speculation of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, notably via the invention and software of elementary symmetry ideas,” and Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen, “for his or her discoveries regarding nuclear shell construction.”
1962: Lev Davidovich Landau, “for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, particularly liquid helium.”
1961: Robert Hofstadter, “for his pioneering research of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries regarding the construction of the nucleons,” and Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer, “for his researches regarding the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the impact which bears his title.”
1960: Donald Arthur Glaser, “for the invention of the bubble chamber.”
1959: Emilio Gino Segrè and Owen Chamberlain, “for his or her discovery of the antiproton.”
1958: Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Il´ja Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, “for the invention and the interpretation of the Cherenkov impact.”
1957: Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee, “for his or her penetrating investigation of the so-called parity legal guidelines which has led to vital discoveries relating to the elementary particles.”
1956: William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, “for his or her researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor impact.”
1955: Willis Eugene Lamb, “for his discoveries regarding the high-quality construction of the hydrogen spectrum,” and Polykarp Kusch, “for his precision willpower of the magnetic second of the electron.”
1954: Max Born, “for his elementary analysis in quantum mechanics, particularly for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction,” and Walther Bothe, “for the coincidence technique and his discoveries made therewith.”
1953: Frits (Frederik) Zernike, “for his demonstration of the section distinction technique, particularly for his invention of the section distinction microscope.”
1952: Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell, “for his or her growth of latest strategies for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith.”
1951: Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, “for his or her pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles.”
1950: Cecil Frank Powell, “for his growth of the photographic technique of finding out nuclear processes and his discoveries relating to mesons made with this technique.”
1949: Hideki Yukawa, “for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the premise of theoretical work on nuclear forces.”
1948: Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, “for his growth of the Wilson cloud chamber technique, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation.”
1947: Sir Edward Victor Appleton, “for his investigations of the physics of the higher ambiance particularly for the invention of the so-called Appleton layer.”
1946: Percy Williams Bridgman, “for the invention of an equipment to provide extraordinarily excessive pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the sphere of excessive stress physics.”
1945: Wolfgang Pauli, “for the invention of the Exclusion Principle, additionally referred to as the Pauli Principle.”
1944: Isidor Isaac Rabi, “for his resonance technique for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.”
1943: Otto Stern, “for his contribution to the event of the molecular ray technique and his discovery of the magnetic second of the proton.”
1940-1942: No Prizes awarded.
1939: Ernest Orlando Lawrence, “for the invention and growth of the cyclotron and for outcomes obtained with it, particularly with regard to synthetic radioactive components.”
1938: Enrico Fermi, “for his demonstrations of the existence of latest radioactive components produced by neutron irradiation, and for his associated discovery of nuclear reactions led to by gradual neutrons.”
1937: Clinton Joseph Davisson and George Paget Thomson, “for his or her experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals.”
1936: Victor Franz Hess, “for his discovery of cosmic radiation,” and Carl David Anderson, “for his discovery of the positron.”
1935: James Chadwick, “for the invention of the neutron.”
1934: No Prize awarded
1933: Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, “for the invention of latest productive types of atomic idea.”
1932: Werner Karl Heisenberg, “for the creation of quantum mechanics, the applying of which has, inter alia, led to the invention of the allotropic types of hydrogen.”
1931: No Prize awarded
1930: Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, “for his work on the scattering of sunshine and for the invention of the impact named after him”
1929: Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, “for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons.”
1928: Owen Willans Richardson, “for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and particularly for the invention of the legislation named after him.”
1927: Arthur Holly Compton, “for his discovery of the impact named after him,” and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, “for his technique of creating the paths of electrically charged particles seen by condensation of vapor.”
1926: Jean Baptiste Perrin, “for his work on the discontinuous construction of matter, and particularly for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium.”
1925: James Franck and Gustav Ludwig Hertz, “for his or her discovery of the legal guidelines governing the affect of an electron upon an atom.”
1924: Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn, “for his discoveries and analysis in the sphere of X-ray spectroscopy.”
1923: Robert Andrews Millikan, “for his work on the elementary cost of electrical energy and on the photoelectric impact.”
1922: Niels Henrik David Bohr, “for his providers in the investigation of the construction of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them.”
1921: Albert Einstein, “for his providers to Theoretical Physics, and particularly for his discovery of the legislation of the photoelectric impact.”
1920: Charles Edouard Guillaume, “in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel metal alloys.”
1919: Johannes Stark, “for his discovery of the Doppler impact in canal rays and the splitting of spectral strains in electrical fields.”
1918: Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, “in recognition of the providers he rendered to the development of Physics by his discovery of power quanta.”
1917: Charles Glover Barkla, “for his discovery of the attribute Röntgen radiation of the weather.”
1916: No Prize awarded.
1915: Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, “for his or her providers in the evaluation of crystal construction by way of X-rays.”
1914: Max von Laue, “for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.”
1913: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, “for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the manufacturing of liquid helium.”
1912: Nils Gustaf Dalén, “for his invention of computerized regulators to be used in conjunction with gasoline accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys.”
1911: Wilhelm Wien, “for his discoveries relating to the legal guidelines governing the radiation of warmth.”
1910: Johannes Diderik van der Waals, “for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids.”
1909: Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun, “in recognition of their contributions to the event of wi-fi telegraphy.”
1908: Gabriel Lippmann, “for his technique of reproducing colours photographically primarily based on the phenomenon of interference.”
1907: Albert Abraham Michelson, “for his optical precision devices and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their help.”
1906: Joseph John Thomson, “in recognition of the nice deserves of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electrical energy by gases.”
1905: Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, “for his work on cathode rays.”
1904: Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), “for his investigations of the densities of crucial gases and for his discovery of argon in reference to these research.”
1903: Antoine Henri Becquerel, ” “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity,” and Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.”
1902: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman, “in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena.”
1901: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him.”
