|
Year
|
Nationality
|
Reason for Award
|
Answer
|
|
2016
|
British
|
"for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter"
|
David J. Thouless
|
|
British
|
Duncan M. Haldane
|
|
British
|
J. Michael Kosterlitz
|
|
2015
|
Japanese
|
"for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass"
|
Takaaki Kajita
|
|
Canadian
|
Arthur B. McDonald
|
|
2014
|
Japanese
|
"for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources"
|
Isamu Akasaki
|
|
Japanese
|
Hiroshi Amano
|
|
Japanese
|
Shuji Nakamura
|
|
2013
|
Belgian
|
"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"
|
Francois Englert
|
|
British
|
Peter W. Higgs
|
|
2012
|
French
|
"for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems"
|
Serge Haroche
|
|
American
|
David J. Wineland
|
|
2011
|
American
|
"for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae"
|
Saul Perlmutter
|
|
American, Australian
|
Brian P. Schmidt
|
|
American
|
Adam G. Reiss
|
|
2010
|
Dutch, British
|
"for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene"
|
Andre Geim
|
|
Russian, British
|
Konstantin Novoselov
|
|
2009
|
American, British, Hong Konger/Chinese
|
"for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication"
|
Charles Kuen Kao
|
|
Canadian
|
"for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor"
|
Willard S. Boyle
|
|
American
|
George E. Smith
|
|
2008
|
American, Japanese
|
"for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"
|
Yoichiro Nambu
|
|
Japanese
|
"for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"
|
Makoto Kobayashi
|
|
Japanese
|
Toshihide Maskawa
|
|
2007
|
French
|
"for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance"
|
Albert Fert
|
|
German
|
Peter Grunberg
|
|
2006
|
American
|
"for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"
|
John C. Mather
|
|
American
|
George F. Smoot
|
|
2005
|
American
|
"for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence"
|
Roy J. Glauber
|
|
American
|
"for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique"
|
John L. Hall
|
|
German
|
Theodor W. Hansch
|
|
2004
|
American
|
"for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction"
|
David J. Gross
|
|
American
|
H. David Politzer
|
|
American
|
Frank Wilczek
|
|
2003
|
Russian, and American
|
"for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids"
|
Alexei A. Abrikosov
|
|
Russian
|
Vitaly L. Ginzburg
|
|
British
|
Anthony J. Leggett
|
|
2002
|
American
|
"for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"
|
Raymond Davis Jr.
|
|
Japanese
|
Masatoshi Koshiba
|
|
American, Italian
|
"for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources"
|
Riccardo Giacconi
|
|
2001
|
American
|
"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates"
|
Eric A. Cornell
|
|
German
|
Wolfgang Ketterle
|
|
American
|
Carl E. Wieman
|
|
2000
|
Russian
|
"for basic work on information and communication technology", "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics"
|
Zhores I. Alferov
|
|
American, German
|
Herbert Kroemer
|
|
American
|
"for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit"
|
Jack S. Kilby
|
|
1999
|
Dutch
|
"for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics"
|
Gerardus 't Hooft
|
|
Dutch
|
Martinus J.G. Veltman
|
|
1998
|
American
|
"for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations"
|
Robert B. Laughlin
|
|
American, German
|
Horst L. Stormer
|
|
American, Chinese, Taiwanese
|
Daniel C. Tsui
|
|
1997
|
American
|
"for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light"
|
Steven Chu
|
|
French
|
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
|
|
American
|
William D. Phillips
|
|
1996
|
American
|
"for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3"
|
David M. Lee
|
|
American
|
Douglas D. Osheroff
|
|
American
|
Robert C. Richardson
|
|
1995
|
American
|
"for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics", "for the discovery of the tau lepton"
|
Martin L. Perl
|
|
American
|
"for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics", "for the detection of the neutrino"
|
Frederick Reines
|
|
1994
|
Canadian
|
"for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter", "for the development of neutron spectroscopy"
|
Bertram N. Brockhouse
|
|
American
|
"for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter", "for the development of the neutron diffraction technique"
|
Clifford G. Shull
|
|
1993
|
American
|
"for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation"
|
Russell A. Hulse
|
|
American
|
Joseph H. Taylor Jr.
|
|
1992
|
Polish, Jewish, French
|
"for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber"
|
Georges Charpak
|
|
1991
|
French
|
"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"
|
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
|
|
1990
|
American
|
"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"
|
Jerome I. Friedman
|
|
American
|
Henry W. Kendall
|
|
Canadian
|
Richard E. Taylor
|
|
1989
|
American
|
"for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks"
|
Norman F. Ramsey
|
|
German
|
"for the development of the ion trap technique"
|
Hans G. Dehmelt
|
|
German
|
Wolfgang Paul
|
|
1988
|
American
|
"for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino"
|
Leon M. Lederman
|
|
American
|
Melvin Schwartz
|
|
American, West German
|
Jack Steinberger
|
|
1987
|
West German
|
"for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials"
|
J. Georg Bednorz
|
|
Swiss
|
K. Alexander Muller
|
|
1986
|
West German
|
"for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope"
|
Ernst Ruska
|
|
West German
|
"for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope"
|
Gerd Binnig
|
|
Swiss
|
Heinrich Rohrer
|
|
1985
|
West German
|
"for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect"
|
Klaus von Klitzing
|
|
1984
|
Italian
|
"for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction"
|
Carlo Rubbia
|
|
Dutch
|
Simon van der Meer
|
|
1983
|
American, Indian
|
"for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars"
|
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
|
|
American
|
"for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe"
|
William Alfred Fowler
|
|
1982
|
American
|
"for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions"
|
Kenneth G. Wilson
|
|
1981
|
American, Dutch
|
"for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy"
|
Nicolaas Bloembergen
|
|
American
|
Arthur Leonard Schawlow
|
|
Swedish
|
"for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy"
|
Kai M. Siegbahn
|
|
1980
|
American
|
"for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons"
|
James Watson Cronin
|
|
American
|
Val Lodgson Fitch
|
|
1979
|
American
|
"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"
|
Sheldon Lee Glashow
|
|
Pakistani
|
Abdus Salam
|
|
American
|
Steven Weinberg
|
|
1978
|
Soviet
|
"for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics"
|
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa
|
|
American
|
"for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation"
|
Arno Allan Penzias
|
|
American
|
Robert Woodrow Wilson
|
|
1977
|
American
|
"for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems"
|
Philip Warren Anderson
|
|
British
|
Sir Nevill Francis Mott
|
|
American
|
John Hasbrouck van Vleck
|
|
1976
|
American
|
"for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind"
|
Burton Richter
|
|
American
|
Samuel Chao Chung Ting
|
|
1975
|
Danish
|
"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"
|
Aage Niels Bohr
|
|
American, Danish
|
Ben Roy Mottelson
|
|
American
|
Leo James Rainwater
|
|
1974
|
British
|
"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"
|
Sir Martin Ryle
|
|
British
|
Antony Hewish
|
|
1973
|
Japanese
|
"for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively"
|
Leo Esaki
|
|
American, Norwegian
|
Ivar Giaever
|
|
British
|
"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 effects"
|
Brian David Josephson
|
|
1972
|
American
|
"for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory"
|
John Bardeen
|
|
American
|
Leon Neil Cooper
|
|
American
|
John Robert Schrieffer
|
|
1971
|
British, Hungarian
|
"for his invention and development of the holographic method"
|
Dennis Gabor
|
|
1970
|
Swedish
|
"for fundamental work and discoveries in magnetohydro-dynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics"
|
Hannes Olof Gosta Alfven
|
|
French
|
"for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics"
|
Louis Eugene Felix Neel
|
|
1969
|
American
|
"for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions"
|
Murray Gell-Mann
|
|
1968
|
American
|
"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"
|
Luis Walter Alvarez
|
|
1967
|
American, West German
|
"for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars"
|
Hans Albrecht Bethe
|
|
1966
|
French
|
"for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms"
|
Alfred Kastler
|
|
1965
|
Japanese
|
"for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles"
|
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga
|
|
American
|
Julian Schwinger
|
|
American
|
Richard P. Feynman
|
|
1964
|
American
|
"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"
|
Charles H. Townes
|
|
Soviet
|
Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov
|
|
Soviet
|
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov
|
|
1963
|
American, Hungarian
|
"for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"
|
Eugene Paul Wigner
|
|
American, West German
|
"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"
|
Maria Goeppert Mayer
|
|
West German
|
J. Hans D. Jensen
|
|
1962
|
Soviet
|
"for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium"
|
Lev Davidovich Landau
|
|
1961
|
American
|
"for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons"
|
Robert Hofstadter
|
|
German
|
"for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name"
|
Rudolf Ludwig Mossbauer
|
|
1960
|
American
|
"for the invention of the bubble chamber"
|
Donald Arthur Glaser
|
|
1959
|
American, Italian
|
"for their discovery of the antiproton"
|
Emilio Gino Segre
|
|
American
|
Owen Chamberlain
|
|
1958
|
Soviet
|
"for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect"
|
Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov
|
|
Soviet
|
Il'ja Mikhailovich Frank
|
|
Soviet
|
Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm
|
|
1957
|
Chinese
|
"for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles"
|
Chen Ning Yang
|
|
American, Chinese
|
Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee
|
|
1956
|
American
|
"for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect"
|
William Bradford Shockley
|
|
American
|
John Bardeen
|
|
American
|
Walter Houser Brattain
|
|
1955
|
American
|
"for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum"
|
Willis Eugene Lamb
|
|
American, West German
|
"for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron"
|
Polykarp Kusch
|
|
1954
|
West German
|
"for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction"
|
Max Born
|
|
West German
|
"for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith"
|
Walther Bothe
|
|
1953
|
Dutch
|
"for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope"
|
Frits Zernike
|
|
1952
|
Swiss
|
"for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith"
|
Felix Bloch
|
|
American
|
Edward Mills Purcell
|
|
1951
|
British
|
"for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles"
|
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft
|
|
Irish
|
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton
|
|
1950
|
British
|
"for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method"
|
Cecil Frank Powell
|
|
1949
|
Japanese
|
"for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces"
|
Hideki Yukawa
|
|
1948
|
British
|
"for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation"
|
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
|
|
1947
|
British
|
"for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer"
|
Sir Edward Victor Appleton
|
|
1946
|
American
|
"for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics"
|
Percy Williams Bridgman
|
|
1945
|
Austrian
|
"for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle"
|
Wolfgang Pauli
|
|
1944
|
American
|
"for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei"
|
Isidor Isaac Rabi
|
|
1943
|
Nazi German
|
"for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton"
|
Otto Stern
|
|
1942
|
No Award Given.
|
|
1941
|
No Award Given.
|
|
1940
|
No Award Given.
|
|
1939
|
American
|
"for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements"
|
Ernest Orlando Lawrence
|
|
1938
|
Italian
|
"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"
|
Enrico Fermi
|
|
1937
|
American
|
"for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals"
|
Clinton Joseph Davisson
|
|
British
|
George Paget Thomson
|
|
1936
|
American, Austrian
|
"for his discovery of cosmic radiation"
|
Victor Franz Hess
|
|
American
|
"for his discovery of the positron"
|
Carl David Anderson
|
|
1935
|
British
|
"for the discovery of the neutron"
|
James Chadwick
|
|
1934
|
No Award Given.
|
|
1933
|
Austrian
|
"for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory"
|
Erwin Schrodinger
|
|
British
|
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
|
|
1932
|
German
|
"for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen"
|
Werner Heisenberg
|
|
1931
|
No Award Given.
|
|
1930
|
British Indian
|
"for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him"
|
Sir Chandrasekhara Vekata Raman
|
|
1929
|
French
|
"for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons"
|
Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie
|
|
1928
|
British
|
"for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him"
|
Owen Willans Richardson
|
|
1927
|
American
|
"for his discovery of the effect named after him"
|
Arthur Holly Compton
|
|
British
|
"for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour"
|
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
|
|
1926
|
French
|
"for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium"
|
Jean Baptiste Perrin
|
|
1925
|
German
|
"for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom"
|
James Franck
|
|
German
|
Gustav Ludwig Hertz
|
|
1924
|
Swedish
|
"for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy"
|
Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn
|
|
1923
|
American
|
"for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect"
|
Robert Andrews Millikan
|
|
1922
|
Danish
|
"for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them"
|
Niels Henrik David Bohr
|
|
1921
|
German
|
"for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"
|
Albert Einstein
|
|
1920
|
Swiss
|
"in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys"
|
Charles Edouard Guillaume
|
|
1919
|
German
|
"for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields"
|
Johannes Stark
|
|
1918
|
German
|
"in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta"
|
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
|
|
1917
|
British
|
"for his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements"
|
Charles Glover Barkla
|
|
1916
|
No Award Given.
|
|
1915
|
British
|
"for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays"
|
Sir William Henry Bragg
|
|
British
|
William Lawrence Bragg
|
|
1914
|
German
|
"for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals"
|
Max von Laue
|
|
1913
|
Dutch
|
"for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium"
|
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
|
|
1912
|
Swedish
|
"for his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys"
|
Nils Gustaf Dalen
|
|
1911
|
German
|
"for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat"
|
Wilhelm Wien
|
|
1910
|
Dutch
|
"for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids"
|
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
|
|
1909
|
Italian
|
"in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"
|
Guglielmo Marconi
|
|
German
|
Karl Ferdinand Braun
|
|
1908
|
France
|
"for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference"
|
Gabriel Lippmann
|
|
1907
|
American
|
"for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid"
|
Albert Abraham Michelson
|
|
1906
|
British
|
"in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases"
|
Joseph John Thomson
|
|
1905
|
German
|
"for his work on cathode rays"
|
Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard
|
|
1904
|
British
|
"for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies"
|
Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt)
|
|
1903
|
French
|
"in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity"
|
Antoine Henri Becquerel
|
|
French
|
"in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"
|
Pierre Curie
|
|
French, Polish
|
Marie Curie, née Sklodowska
|
|
1902
|
Dutch
|
"in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena"
|
Hendrk Antoon Lorentz
|
|
Dutch
|
Pieter Zeeman
|
|
1901
|
German
|
"in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him"
|
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen
|
