| Nobel Prize Winners in Physics: 1901 Wilhelm Roentgen for discovering X-rays (1895). 1902 Hendrik A. Lorentz for predicting the Zeeman effect and Pieter Zeeman for discovering the Zeeman effect, the splitting of spectral lines in magnetic fields. 1903 Antoine-Henri Becquerel for discovering radioactivity (1896) and Pierre and Marie Curie for studying radioactivity. 1904 Lord Rayleigh for studying the density of gases and discovering argon. 1905 Philipp Lenard for studying cathode rays, electrons (1898-1899). 1906 J.J. Thomson for studying electrical discharge through gases and discovering the electron (1897). 1907 Albert A. Michelson for inventing optical instruments and measuring the speed of light (1880s). 1908 Gabriel Lippmann for making the first color photographic plate, using interference methods (1891). 1909 Guglielmo Marconi and Carl Ferdinand Braun for developing wireless telegraphy. 1910 Johannes D. van der Waals for studying the equation of state for gases and liquids (1881). 1911 Wilhelm Wien for discovering Wien's law giving the peak of a blackbody spectrum (1893). 1912 Nils Dalen for inventing automatics gas regulators for lighthouses. 1913 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes for the discovery of superconductivity and liquefying helium (1908). 1914 Max T.F. von Laue for studying x-rays from their diffraction by crystals, showing that x-rays are electromagnetic waves (1912). 1915 William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, his son, for studying the diffraction of x-rays in crystals. 1916 No prize in Physics was given. 1917 Charles Barkla for studying atoms by x-ray scattering (1906). 1918 Max Planck for discovering energy quanta. 1919 Johannes Stark, for discovering the Stark effect, the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields (1913). 1920 Charles-Edouard Guillaume for discovering invar, a nickel-steel alloy with low coefficient of expansion. 1921 Albert Einstein for explaining the photoelectric effect and for his services to theoretical physics (1905). 1922 Niels Bohr for his model of the atom and its readiation (1913). 1923 Robert A. Millikan for measuring the charge on an electron (1911) and for studying the photoelectric effect experimentally (1914). 1924 Karl M. G. Siegbahn for his work in x-ray spectroscopy. 1925 James Franck and Gustav Hertz for discovering the Franck-Hertz effect in electron-atom collisions. 1926 Jean-Baptiste Perrin for studying Brownian motion to validate the discontinuous structure of matter and measure the size of atoms. 1927 Arthur Holly Compton for discovering the Compton effect on x-rays, their change in wavelength when they collide with matter (1922), and Charles T. R. Wilson for inventing the cloud chamber, used to study charged particles (1906). 1928 Owen W. Richardson for studying the thermionic effect and electrons emitted by hot metals (1911). 1929 Louis Victor de Broglie for discovering the wave nature of electrons (1923). 1930 Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman for studying Raman scattering, the scattering of light by atoms and molecules with a change in wavelength (1928). 1931 No prize in Physics was given. 1932 Werner Heisenberg for creating quantum mechanics (1925). 1933 Erwin Schrodinger and Paul A. M. Dirac for developing wave mechanics (1925) and relativistic quantum mechanics (1927). 1934 No prize in Physics was given. 1935 James Chadwick for discovering the neutron (1932). 1936 Carl D. Anderson for discovering the positron in particular and antimatter in general (1932) and Victor F. Hess for discovering cosmic rays. 1937 Clinton Davisson and George Thomson for discovering the diffraction of electrons by crystals, confirming de Broglie's hypothesis (1927). 1938 Enrico Fermi for producing the transuranic radioactive elements by neutron irradiation (1934-1937). 1939 Ernest O. Lawrence for inventing the cyclotron. 1940 No prize in Physics was given. 1941 No prize in Physics was given. 1942 No prize in Physics was given. 1943 Otto Stern for developing molecular-beam studies (1923), and using them to discover the magnetic moment of the proton (1933). 1944 Isidor I. Rabi for discovering nuclear magnetic resonance in atomic and molecular beams. 1945 Wolfgang Pauli for discovering the exclusion principle (1924). 1946 Percy W. Bridgman for studying physics at high pressures. 1947 Edward V. Appleton for studying the ionosphere. 1948 Patrick M. S. Blackett for studying nuclear physics with cloud-chamber photographs of cosmic-ray interactions. 1949 Hideki Yukawa for predicting the existence of mesons (1935). 1950 Cecil F. Powell for developing the method of studying cosmic rays with photographic emulsions and discovering new mesons. 1951 Hohn D. Cockcroft and Ernest T. S. Walton for transmuting nuclei in an accelerator (1932). 1952 Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell for discovering nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and gases (1946). 1953 Frits Zernike for inventing the phase-contrast microscope, which uses interference to provide high contrast. 1954 Max Born for interpreting the wave function as a probability (1926) and other quantum-mechanical discoveries and Walther Bothe for developing the coincidence method to study subatomic particles (1930-1931), producing, in particular, the particle interpreted by Chadwick as the neutron. 1955 Willis E. Lamb, Jr., for discovering the Lamb shift in the hydrogen spectrum (1947) and Polykarp Kusch for determining the magnetic moment of the electron (1947). 1956 John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley for inventing the transistor (1956). 1957 T.-D. Lee and C.-N. Yang for predicting that partiy is not conserved in beta decay (1956). 1958 Pavel A. Cerenkov for discovering Cerenkov radiation (1935) and Ilya M. Frank and Igor Tamm for interpreting it (1937). 1959 Emilio G. Segre and Owen Chamberlain for discovering the antiproton (1955). 1960 Donald A. Glaser for inventing the bubble chamber to study elementary particles (1952). 1961 Robert Hofstadter for discovering internal structure in protons and neutrons and Rudolf L. Mossbauer for discovering the Mossbauer effect of recoilless gamma-ray emission (1957). 1962 Lev Davidovich Landau for studying liquid helium and other condensed matter theoretically. 1963 Eugene P. Wigner for applying symmetry principles to elementary-particle theory and Maria Goeppert Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen for studying the shell model of nuclei (1947). 1964 Charles H. Townes, Nikolai G. Basov, and Alexandr M. Prokhorov for developing masers (1951-1952) and lasers. 1965 Sin-itiro Tomonaga, Julian S. Schwinger, and Richard P. Feynman for developing quantum electrodynamics (1948). 1966 Alfred Kastler for his optical methods of studying atomic energy levels. 1967 Hans Albrecht Bethe for discovering the routes of energy production in stars (1939). 1968 Luis W. Alvarez for discovering resonance states of elementary particles. 1969 Murray Gell-Mann for classifying elementary particles (1963). 1970 Hannes Alfven for developing magnetohydrodynamic theory and Louis Eugene Felix Neel for discovering antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism (1930s). 1971 Dennis Gabor for developing holography (1947). 1972 John Bardeen, Leon N. Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer for explaining superconductivity (1957). 1973 Leo Esaki for discovering tunneling in semiconductors, Ivar Giaever for discovering tunneling in superconductors, and Brian D. Josephson for predicting the Josephson effect, which involves tunneling of paired electrons (1958-1962). 1974 Anthony Hewish for discovering pulsars and Martin Ryle for developing radio interferometry. 1975 Aage N. Bohr, Ben R. Mottelson, and James Rainwater for discovering why some nuclei take asymmetric shapes. 1976 Burton Richter and Samuel C. C. Ting for discovering the J/psi particle, the first charmed particle (1974). 1977 John H. Van Vleck, Nevill F. Mott, and Philip W. Anderson for studying solids quantum-mechanically. 1978 Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson for discovering the cosmic background radiation (1965) and Pyotr Kapitsa for his studies of liquid helium. 1979 Sheldon L. Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg for developing the theory that unified the weak and electromagnetic forces (1958-1971). 1980 Val Fitch and James W. Cronin for discovering CP (charge-parity) violation (1964), which possibly explains the cosmological dominance of matter over antimatter. 1981 Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur L. Schawlow for developing laser spectroscopy and Kai M. Siegbahn for developing high-resolution electron spectroscopy (1958). 1982 Kenneth G. Wilson for developing a method of constructing theories of phase transitions to analyze critical phenomena. 1983 William A. Fowler for theoretical studies of astrophysical nucleosynthesis and Subramanyan Chandrasekhar for studying physical processes of importance to stellar structure and evolution, including the prediction of white dwarf stars (1930). 1984 Carlo Rubbia for discovering the W and Z particles, verifying the electroweak unification, and Simon van der Meer, for developing the method of stochastic cooling of the CERN beam that allowed the discovery (1982-1983). 1985 Klaus von Klitzing for the quantized Hall effect, relating to conductivity in the presence of a magnetic field (1980). 1986 Ernst Ruska for inventing the electron microscope (1931), and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer for inventing the scanning-tunneling electron microscope (1981). 1987 J. Georg Bednorz and Karl Alex Muller for the discovery of high temperature superconductivity (1986). 1988 Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger for a collaborative experiment that led to the development of a new tool for studying the weak nuclear force, which affects the radioactive decay of atoms. 1989 Norman Ramsay (U.S.) for various techniques in atomic physics; and Hans Dehmelt (U.S.) and Wolfgang Paul (Germany) for the development of techniques for trapping single charge particles. 1990 Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall (both U.S.), and Richard Taylor (Canada) for experiments important to the development of the quark model. 1991 Pierre-Gilles de Gennes 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 George Charpak for developing detectors that trace the paths of evanescent subatomic particles produced in particle accelerators. 1993 Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor for discovering evidence of gravitational waves. 1994 Bertram N. Brockhouse and Clifford G. Schull for pioneering work in neutron scattering. | |
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