List of 219 Nobel Prize Winners for Physics - 1901-2021

(Last Updated On: October 6, 2021)

Physics is an area of science that significantly contributes to the life and progress of human beings. There are a lot of physicists who contributed a lot to the development of lives. A list of Nobel prize winners in physics gives an overview of the entire picturesque of the realm of physics. In this article, I am going to talk about the list of Nobel prize winners in physics.

The list of Nobel prize winners in physics is an accumulation of the awardee since 1901 when the first Nobel was awarded. With this list of Nobel prize winners in physics, you can easily find the great physicist you need. You may also love to read the Greatest Physicists, Scientists, and Engineers.

List of Nobel prize winners in physics

Let’s find below the list of Nobel prize winners in physics for your better understanding:

Year	Image	Laureate	Country	Rationale
1901		Wilhelm Röntgen	Germany	“in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him”
1902		Hendrik Lorentz	Netherlands	“in recognition of the extraordinary service, they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena”
1902		Pieter Zeeman	Netherlands
1903		Antoine Henri Becquerel	France	“for his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity”
		Pierre Curie	France	“for their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”
		Marie Skłodowska-Curie	Poland France
1904		Lord Rayleigh	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	Austria-Hungary Germany	“for his work on cathode rays”
1906		Joseph John Thomson	United Kingdom	“for his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases”
1907		Albert Abraham Michelson	Poland United States	“for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid”
1908		Gabriel Lippmann	France	“for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference”
1909		Guglielmo Marconi	Italy	“for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy”
1909		Karl Ferdinand Braun	Germany
1910		Johannes Diderik van der Waals	Netherlands	“for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids”
1911		Wilhelm Wien	Germany	“for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat”
1912		Nils Gustaf Dalén	Sweden	“for his invention of automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses and 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”, an important step in the development of X-ray spectroscopy.
1915		William Henry Bragg	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”
1915		William Lawrence Bragg	Australia United Kingdom
1916	Not awarded due to World War I
1917		Charles Glover Barkla	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	Germany	“for the services he rendered to the advancement of physics by his discovery of energy quanta”
1919		Johannes Stark	Germany	“for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields”
1920		Charles Édouard Guillaume	Switzerland	“for 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 discovery of the law 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	Germany	“for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom”
1925		Gustav Hertz	Germany
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”
1927		Charles Thomson Rees Wilson	United Kingdom	“for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapour”
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		Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie	France	“for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons”
1930		Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman	India	“for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him”
1931	Not awarded
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	Austria	“for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory”
1933		Paul Dirac	United Kingdom
1934	Not awarded
1935		James Chadwick	United Kingdom	“for the discovery of the neutron”
1936		Victor Francis Hess	Austria	“for his discovery of cosmic radiation”
1936		Carl David Anderson	United States	“for his discovery of the positron”
1937		Clinton Joseph Davisson	United States	“for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals”
1937		George Paget Thomson	United Kingdom
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	Not awarded due to World War II
1941	Not awarded due to World War II
1942	Not awarded due to World War II
1943		Otto Stern	United States Germany	“for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton”
1944		Isidor Isaac Rabi	United States Poland	“for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei”
1945		Wolfgang Pauli	Austria	“for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli principle”
1946		Percy Williams Bridgman	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”
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	United Kingdom	“for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles”
1951		Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton	Ireland
1952		Felix Bloch	Switzerland United States	“for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith”
1952		Edward Mills Purcell	United States
1953		Frits Zernike	Netherlands	“for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope”
1954		Max Born	West Germany	“for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction”
1954		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”
1955		Polykarp Kusch	United States	“for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron”
1956		John Bardeen	United States	“for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect”
		Walter Houser Brattain	United States
		William Bradford Shockley	United States
1957		Tsung-Dao Lee	Republic of China	“for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles”
1957		Chen-Ning Yang	Republic of China
1958		Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov	Soviet Union	“for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect”
		Ilya Frank	Soviet Union
		Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm	Soviet Union
1959		Emilio Gino Segrè	Italy United States	“for their discovery of the antiproton”
1959		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”
1961		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”
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	Germany United States	“for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure”
		J. Hans D. Jensen	West Germany	“for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure”
1964		Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov	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	Soviet Union
		Charles Hard Townes	United States
1965		Richard Phillips Feynman	United States	“for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles”
		Julian Schwinger	United States
		Shin’ichirō Tomonaga	Japan
1966		Alfred Kastler	France	“for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms”
1967		Hans Albrecht Bethe	United States Germany	“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”
1970		Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén	Sweden	“for fundamental work and discoveries in magneto-hydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics”
1970		Louis Néel	France	“for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics”
1971		Dennis Gabor	Hungary United Kingdom	“for his invention and development of the holographic method”
1972		John Bardeen	United States	“for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory”
		Leon Neil Cooper	United States
		John Robert Schrieffer	United States
1973		Leo Esaki	Japan	“for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively”
		Ivar Giaever	United States Norway
		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	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”
1974		Antony Hewish	United Kingdom
1975		Aage Bohr	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	Denmark
		Leo James Rainwater	United States
1976		Burton Richter	United States	“for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind”
1976		Samuel Chao Chung Ting	United States
1977		Philip Warren Anderson	United States	“for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems”
		Nevill Francis Mott	United Kingdom
		John Hasbrouck Van Vleck	United States
1978		Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa	Soviet Union	“for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics”
		Arno Allan Penzias	United States	“for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation”
		Robert Woodrow Wilson	United States
1979		Sheldon Lee Glashow	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	Pakistan
		Steven Weinberg	United States
1980		James Watson Cronin	United States	“for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons”
1980		Val Logsdon Fitch	United States
1981		Nicolaas Bloembergen	Netherlands United States	“for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy”
		Arthur Leonard Schawlow	United States
		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”
1983		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	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”
1984		Simon van der Meer	Netherlands
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	West Germany	“for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope”
		Heinrich Rohrer	Switzerland	“for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope”
1987		Johannes Georg Bednorz	West Germany	“for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials”
1987		Karl Alexander Müller	Switzerland
1988		Leon Max Lederman	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	United States
		Jack Steinberger	United States
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	United States West Germany	“for the development of the ion trap technique”
		Wolfgang Paul	West Germany	“for the development of the ion trap technique”
1990		Jerome I. Friedman	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	United States
		Richard E. Taylor	Canada
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 Poland	“for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber”
1993		Russell Alan Hulse	United States	“for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation”
1993		Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.	United States
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”
1994		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”
1995		Frederick Reines	United States	“for the detection of the neutrino” and “for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics”
1996		David Morris Lee	United States	“for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3”
		Douglas D. Osheroff
		Robert Coleman Richardson
1997		Steven Chu	United States	“for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”
		Claude Cohen-Tannoudji	France
		William Daniel Phillips	United States
1998		Robert B. Laughlin	United States	“for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations”
		Horst Ludwig Störmer	Germany
		Daniel Chee Tsui	Republic of China United States
1999		Gerard ‘t Hooft	Netherlands	“for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics”
1999		Martinus J. G. Veltman	Netherlands
2000		Zhores Ivanovich Alferov	Russia	“for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and optoelectronics”
		Herbert Kroemer	Germany
		Jack St. Clair Kilby	United States	“for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit”
2001		Eric Allin Cornell	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 Edwin Wieman	United States
		Wolfgang Ketterle	Germany
2002		Raymond Davis Jr.	United States	“for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos”
		Masatoshi Koshiba	Japan
		Riccardo Giacconi	Italy United States	“for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources”
2003		Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov	Russia United States	“for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids”
		Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg	Russia
		Anthony James Leggett	United Kingdom United States
2004		David J. Gross	United States	“for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction”
		Hugh David Politzer
		Frank Wilczek
2005		Roy J. Glauber	United States	“for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence”
		John L. Hall	United States	“for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique”
		Theodor W. Hänsch	Germany
2006		John C. Mather	United States	“for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”
2006		George F. Smoot	United States
2007		Albert Fert	France	“for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance”
2007		Peter Grünberg	Germany	“for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance”
2008		Makoto Kobayashi	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
		Yoichiro Nambu	Japan United States	“for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”
2009		Charles K. Kao	Hong Kong United Kingdom United States	“for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication”
		Willard S. Boyle	Canada United States	“for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor”
		George E. Smith	United States
2010		Andre Geim	Russia United Kingdom Netherlands	“for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”
2010		Konstantin Novoselov	Russia United Kingdom
2011		Saul Perlmutter	United States	“for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”
		Brian P. Schmidt	Australia United States
		Adam G. Riess	United States
2012		Serge Haroche	France	“for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.”
2012		David J. Wineland	United States
2013		François Englert	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”
2013		Peter Higgs	United Kingdom
2014		Isamu Akasaki	Japan	“for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”
		Hiroshi Amano	Japan
		Shuji Nakamura	Japan United States
2015		Takaaki Kajita	Japan	“for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass”
2015		Arthur B. McDonald	Canada
2016		David J. Thouless	United Kingdom	“for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”
		F. Duncan M. Haldane	United Kingdom Slovenia
		John M. Kosterlitz	United Kingdom United States^[118]
2017		Rainer Weiss	Germany United States	“for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”
		Kip Thorne	United States
		Barry Barish	United States
2018		Arthur Ashkin	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	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	Canada
2019		James Peebles	Canada United States	“for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology”
		Michel Mayor	Switzerland	“for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star”
		Didier Queloz	Switzerland
2020		Roger Penrose	United Kingdom	“for the discovery, that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”
		Reinhard Genzel	Germany	“for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy”
		Andrea Ghez	United States
2021		Syukuro Manabe	Japan United States^[125]	“for the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”
		Klaus Hasselmann	Germany
		Giorgio Parisi	Italy	“for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”