List of Nobel Prize Winners in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded annually since 1901 and has been endowed with 9 million Swedish kronor (approx. 856,000 euros) since 2017 . The selection of the laureates is the responsibility of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . The founder of the prize, Alfred Nobel , decreed in his will in 1895, in which the award of the award was regulated, that the Nobel Prize for Physics should be awarded to "who has made the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics". The Nobel Prize is presented each year by the King of Sweden on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, December 10th.

Since the first Nobel Prize was awarded, the prize has been awarded a total of 112 times. A total of 211 physicists were honored, including 208 men (98.6%) and three women (1.4%). John Bardeen was the only one to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics twice. From 1901 to 2019, the prize was awarded to one person 47 times. It was divided between two people 32 times and between three people 34 times. The prize was not awarded six times, the last time in 1942.

The section Distribution by country provides an overview of the distribution to individual nations .

Award winners

The following list contains a chronological overview of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics , their respective countries and the reasons for the selection committee. The category Nobel Prize Winners for Physics offers an alphabetical overview of the winners .

1901 to 1910 • 1911 to 1920 • 1921 to 1930 • 1931 to 1940 • 1941 to 1950 • 1951 to 1960

1961 to 1970 • 1971 to 1980 • 1981 to 1990 • 1991 to 2000 • 2001 to 2010 • 2011 to 2020

1901 to 1910

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1901	Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923)	Germany	"In recognition of the extraordinary merit that he has earned by discovering the rays named after him "
1902	Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928)	Netherlands	"In recognition of the extraordinary merit that they have earned through their investigations into the influence of magnetism on the radiation phenomena" (splitting of spectral lines in the magnetic field, Zeeman effect )
	Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943)	Netherlands
1903	Henri Becquerel (1852-1908)	France	"In recognition of the extraordinary merit he has earned through the discovery of spontaneous radioactivity "
	Marie Curie (1867-1934)	France (born in Warsaw , Congress Poland )	"In recognition of the extraordinary merit that they have earned through their joint work on the radiation phenomena discovered by H. Becquerel"
	Pierre Curie (1859-1906)	France
1904	John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842-1919)	United Kingdom	"For his investigations into the density of the most important gases and his discovery of argon in connection therewith "
1905	Philipp Lenard (1862-1947)	Germany (born in Pressburg , then Hungary )	"For his work on cathode rays "
1906	Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940)	United Kingdom	"In recognition of the great merit he has earned through his theoretical and experimental investigations into the passage of electricity through gases"
1907	Albert A. Michelson (1852-1931)	United States (born in Strelno , then Prussia )	"For his optical precision instruments and his spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with them" ( Michelson interferometer )
1908	Gabriel Lippmann (1845-1921)	France (born in Hollerich , Luxembourg )	"For his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the interference phenomenon "
1909	Ferdinand Braun (1850-1918)	Germany	"In recognition of their contribution to the development of wireless telegraphy "
	Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937)	Italy
1910	Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923)	Netherlands	"For his work on the equation of state of gases and liquids" ( Van der Waals equation )

1911 to 1920

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1911	Wilhelm Wien (1864–1928)	Germany	"For his discoveries regarding the laws of thermal radiation" ( Vienna's law of displacement )
1912	Gustaf Dalén (1869–1937)	Sweden	"For his invention of self-acting regulators that are used in combination with gas accumulators to illuminate lighthouses and light barrels "
1913	Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853–1926)	Netherlands	"On the occasion of his investigations into the properties of bodies at low temperatures , which among other things led to the representation of liquid helium "
1914	Max von Laue (1879–1960) (awarded 1915)	Germany	"For his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays when passing through crystals "
1915	William Henry Bragg (1862-1942)	United Kingdom	"For their services in researching crystal structures using X-rays"
	William Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971)	United Kingdom (born in Adelaide , Australia )
1916	not awarded
1917	Charles Glover Barkla (1877–1944) (awarded 1918)	United Kingdom	"For his discovery of the characteristic X-rays of the elements "
1918	Max Planck (1858–1947) (awarded 1919)	Germany	"As recognition of the merit that he has earned through the discovery of the energy quanta for the development of physics" (theory of quantization )
1919	Johannes Stark (1874–1957)	Germany	"For his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of the spectral lines in the electric field" ( Stark effect )
1920	Charles Édouard Guillaume (1861–1938)	Switzerland	"In recognition of the merit he has earned through the discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys and the precision measurements in physics"

1921 to 1930

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1921	Albert Einstein (1879–1955) (announced November 9, 1922, awarded December 10, 1922)	Germany and Switzerland (born in Ulm )	"For his services to theoretical physics , especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect "
1922	Niels Bohr (1885–1962)	Denmark	"For his services to research into the structure of atoms and the radiation emitted by them"
1923	Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953)	United States	"For his work on the elementary electrical charge * and the photoelectric effect" (* Millikan experiment )
1924	Manne Siegbahn (1886–1978) (awarded 1925)	Sweden	"For his X-ray spectroscopic discoveries and research"
1925	James Franck (1882–1964) (awarded 1926)	Germany	"For their discovery of the laws that describe the collision of an electron with an atom" ( Franck-Hertz experiment )
	Gustav Hertz (1887–1975) (awarded 1926)	Germany
1926	Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1870-1942)	France	"For his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, especially for his discovery of the sedimentation equilibrium"
1927	Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962)	United States	"For the discovery of the effect named after him" ( Compton effect )
	Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869-1959)	United Kingdom (born in Glencorse , Scotland )	"For his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible through condensing vapor" (Wilson's cloud chamber )
1928	Owen Willans Richardson (1879-1959) (awarded 1929)	United Kingdom	"For his work on the glowing electrical effect and especially for the discovery of the laws named after him "
1929	Louis de Broglie (1892-1987)	France	"For the discovery of the wave nature of electrons" ( De Broglie wave )
1930	CV Raman (1888–1970)	India	"For his work on the scattering of light and the discovery of the effect named after him" ( Raman scattering )

1931 to 1940

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1931	not awarded
1932	Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) (awarded 1933)	Germany	"For the foundation of quantum mechanics , the application of which led, among other things, to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen "
1933	Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961)	Austria	"For the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory" (further development of quantum mechanics)
	Paul Dirac (1902-1984)	United Kingdom
1934	not awarded
1935	James Chadwick (1891–1974)	United Kingdom	"For the discovery of the neutron "
1936	Victor Franz Hess (1883–1964)	Austria	"For the discovery of cosmic rays "
	Carl David Anderson (1905-1991)	United States	"For the discovery of the positron "
1937	Clinton Davisson (1881-1958)	United States	"For their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals"
	George Paget Thomson (1892-1975)	United Kingdom
1938	Enrico Fermi (1901–1954)	Italy	"For the determination of new radioactive elements generated by neutron bombardment and the discovery of the nuclear reactions triggered by slow neutrons in connection with this work "
1939	Ernest Lawrence (1901-1958)	United States	"For the invention and development of the cyclotron and the results achieved with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements"
1940	not awarded

1941 to 1950

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1941	not awarded
1942	not awarded
1943	Otto Stern (1888–1969) (awarded 1944)	United States (born in Sohrau , then Germany )	"For his contributions to the development of the molecular beam method and the discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton "
1944	Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988)	United States (born in Rymanów , then Austria-Hungary )	"For the resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei"
1945	Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)	Austria	"For the discovery of the exclusion principle known as the Pauli principle "
1946	Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961)	United States	"For the invention of an apparatus for generating extremely high pressure and for the discoveries he made with it in the field of high-pressure physics"
1947	Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965)	United Kingdom	"For his research in the field of physics of the upper layers of the atmosphere, in particular for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer "
1948	Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett (1897–1974)	United Kingdom	"For the further development of the application of Wilson's cloud chamber and the discoveries made with it in the field of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation "
1949	Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981)	Japan	"For his prediction of the existence of mesons based on the theory of nuclear forces "
1950	Cecil Powell (1903-1969)	United Kingdom	"For the development of the photographic method for the investigation of the nuclear processes and the associated discovery of the mesons"

1951 to 1960

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1951	John Cockcroft (1897-1967)	United Kingdom	"For their pioneering work in the field of atomic nucleus conversion by artificially accelerated atomic particles" ( Cockcroft-Walton accelerator )
	Ernest Walton (1903-1995)	Ireland
1952	Felix Bloch (1905-1983)	United States (born in Zurich , Switzerland )	"For the development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurement and the discoveries made with them" ( nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy )
	Edward Mills Purcell (1912-1997)	United States
1953	Frits Zernike (1888–1966)	Netherlands	"For the phase contrast method specified by him, in particular for his invention of the phase contrast microscope "
1954	Max Born (1882-1970)	United Kingdom (born in Breslau , then Germany )	"For his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wave function "
	Walther Bothe (1891–1957)	BR Germany	"For his coincidence method and his discoveries made with its help"
1955	Willis Eugene Lamb (1913-2008)	United States	"For his discoveries about the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum " ( Lamb shift )
	Polycarp Kush (1911–1993)	United States (born in Blankenburg , Germany )	"For its precise determination of the magnetic moment in the electron"
1956	William Bradford Shockley (1910-1989)	United States (born in London , United Kingdom )	"For their research on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect"
	John Bardeen (1908-1991)	United States
	Walter Houser Brattain (1902–1987)	United States
1957	Chen Ning Yang (* 1922)	China	"For her fundamental research on the laws of so-called parity , which led to important discoveries about elementary particles"
	Tsung-Dao Lee (* 1926)	China
1958	Pavel Cherenkov (1904–1990)	Soviet Union	"For the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect "
	Ilja Frank (1908–1990)	Soviet Union
	Igor Tamm (1895–1971)	Soviet Union
1959	Emilio Segrè (1905-1989)	United States (born in Tivoli , Italy )	"For their discovery of the antiproton "
	Owen Chamberlain (1920-2006)	United States
1960	Donald Arthur Glaser (1926-2013)	United States	"For the invention of the bubble chamber "

1961 to 1970

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1961	Robert Hofstadter (1915–1990)	United States	"For his groundbreaking studies on electron scattering in the atomic nucleus and for the discoveries made about the structure of nucleons "
	Rudolf Mößbauer (1929–2011)	BR Germany	"For his research on the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his associated discovery, which bears the name Mößbauer effect "
1962	Lew Landau (1908–1968)	Soviet Union	"For his groundbreaking theories about condensed matter , especially liquid helium" ( superfluidity )
1963	Eugene Paul Wigner (1902-1995)	United States (born in Budapest , Hungary )	"For his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles, especially through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"
	Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906–1972)	United States (born in Katowice , then Germany )	"For their discovery of the nuclear shell structure "
	Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen (1907–1973)	BR Germany
1964	Charles Hard Townes (1915-2015)	United States	"For fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics , which led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser - laser principle"
	Nikolai Bassow (1922-2001)	Soviet Union
	Alexander Prokhorov (1916-2002)	Soviet Union
1965	Richard Feynman (1918–1988)	United States	"For their fundamental achievement in quantum electrodynamics , with profound consequences for elementary particle physics"
	Julian Seymour Schwinger (1918–1994)	United States
	Shin'ichirō Tomonaga (1906–1979)	Japan
1966	Alfred Kastler (1902–1984)	France (born in Guebwiller , Alsace, then Germany )	"For the discovery and development of optical methods in the study of Hertz resonances in atoms"
1967	Hans Bethe (1906-2005)	United States (born in Strasbourg , then Germany )	"For his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries about the generation of energy in the stars "
1968	Luis Walter Alvarez (1911–1988)	United States	"For his decisive contribution to elementary particle physics, in particular his discovery of a large number of resonance states , made possible by his development of techniques with the hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis"
1969	Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019)	United States	"For his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions" (see Quark )
1970	Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995)	Sweden	"For his fundamental achievements and discoveries in magnetohydrodynamics with fruitful applications in various parts of plasma physics "
	Louis Néel (1904-2000)	France	"For his fundamental achievements and discoveries regarding antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism , which have led to important applications in solid-state physics "

1971 to 1980

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1971	Dennis Gábor (1900–1979)	United Kingdom (born in Budapest , Hungary )	"For his invention and development of the holographic method "
1972	John Bardeen (1908-1991)	United States	"For their jointly developed theory of superconductivity , also known as the BCS theory "
	Leon Neil Cooper (born 1930)	United States
	John Robert Schrieffer (1931-2019)	United States
1973	Leo Esaki (* 1925)	Japan	"For your experimental discoveries regarding the tunnel phenomenon in semi- or superconductors"
	Ivar Giaever (born 1929)	United States (born in Bergen , Norway )
	Brian David Josephson (born 1940)	United Kingdom	"For his theoretical prediction of properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, especially those phenomena that are generally known as the Josephson effect "
1974	Martin Ryle (1918-1984)	United Kingdom	"For their pioneering work in radio astronomy : Ryle for his observations and inventions, especially in aperture synthesis technology and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars "
	Antony Hewish (* 1924)	United Kingdom
1975	Aage Niels Bohr (1922-2009)	Denmark	"For the discovery of the connection between collective and particle movement in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of atomic nuclei based on this connection"
	Ben Mottelson (* 1926)	Denmark (born in Chicago , Illinois , United States )
	James Rainwater (1917-1986)	United States
1976	Burton Richter (1931-2018)	United States	"For their leading achievements in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind "
	Samuel Chao Chung Ting (* 1936)	United States
1977	Philip Warren Anderson (1923-2020)	United States	"For the basic theoretical achievements on electronic structure in magnetic and disordered systems"
	Nevill Francis Mott (1905-1996)	United Kingdom
	John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899-1980)	United States
1978	Pyotr Kapiza (1894-1984)	Soviet Union	"For his fundamental inventions and discoveries in low-temperature physics "
	Arno Penzias (* 1933)	United States (born in Munich , Germany )	"For the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation "
	Robert Woodrow Wilson (* 1936)	United States
1979	Sheldon Lee Glass Show (* 1932)	United States	“For their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including u. a. the prediction of the weak neutral currents "( electroweak interaction )
	Abdus Salam (1926–1996)	Pakistan (born in Jhang , British India )
	Steven Weinberg (* 1933)	United States
1980	James Cronin (1931-2016)	United States	"For the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K mesons "
	Val Fitch (1923-2015)	United States

1981 to 1990

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1981	Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-2017)	United States (born in Dordrecht , Netherlands )	"For their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy "
	Arthur Leonard Schawlow (1921–1999)	United States
	Kai Siegbahn (1918–2007)	Sweden	"For his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy "
1982	Kenneth Wilson (1936-2013)	United States	"For his theory about critical phenomena in phase changes "
1983	Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995)	United States (born in Lahore , British India )	"For his theoretical studies of the physical processes that are important for the structure and evolution of stars"
	William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995)	United States	"For theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions that are important for the formation of chemical elements in space "
1984	Carlo Rubbia (* 1934)	Italy	"For their decisive contributions to the great project that led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z , mediators of weak interactions "
	Simon van der Meer (1925-2011)	Netherlands
1985	Klaus von Klitzing (* 1943)	BR Germany	"For the discovery of the quantized Hall effect "
1986	Ernst Ruska (1906–1988)	BR Germany	"For his fundamental work in electron optics and for the construction of the first electron microscope "
	Gerd Binnig (* 1947)	BR Germany	"For your construction of the scanning tunneling microscope "
	Heinrich Rohrer (1933–2013)	Switzerland
1987	Georg Bednorz (* 1950)	BR Germany	"For their groundbreaking discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials "
	Karl Alexander Müller (* 1927)	Switzerland
1988	Leon Max Lederman (1922-2018)	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 (1932-2006)	United States
	Jack Steinberger (* 1921)	United States (born in Bad Kissingen , Germany )
1989	Wolfgang Paul (1913–1993)	BR Germany	"For their development of ion trap technology" ( Paul trap , Penning trap )
	Hans Georg Dehmelt (1922–2017)	United States (born in Görlitz , Germany )
	Norman Ramsey (1915-2011)	United States	"For his development of an improved measurement technique for atomic energy transitions, with the precise time and frequency measurements were possible" ( atomic clock )
1990	Jerome Isaac Friedman (born 1930)	United States	"For her groundbreaking investigations into deep inelastic electron scattering from protons and bound neutrons, which was of decisive importance for the development of the quark model of particle physics"
	Henry Way Kendall (1926-1999)	United States
	Richard Edward Taylor (1929-2018)	Canada

1991 to 2000

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
1991	Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932-2007)	France	"For his work on ordering processes in liquid crystals and polymer solutions , especially the successful application of mathematical models in the transition from the ordered to the disordered state in physics and chemistry"
1992	Georges Charpak (1924-2010)	France (born in Dabrovica , Poland )	"For his fundamental work on detectors for particle physics , especially for the construction of the first multi-wire proportional chambers (1968)"
1993	Russell Hulse (born 1950)	United States	"For their discovery of a pulsar in a binary star system "
	Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. (born 1941)	United States
1994	Bertram Brockhouse (1918-2003)	Canada	"For their development of techniques for the scattering of the uncharged core particles "
	Clifford Shull (1915-2001)	United States
1995	Martin Lewis Perl (1927-2014)	United States	"For his discovery of a massive subatomic elementary particle with a negative charge" ( τ-lepton )
	Frederick Reines (1918–1998)	United States	"For his discovery of an uncharged subatomic elementary particle" ( neutrino )
1996	David Morris Lee (* 1931)	United States	"For their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3 at very low temperatures (around absolute zero )"
	Douglas Dean Osheroff (* 1945)	United States
	Robert Coleman Richardson (1937-2013)	United States
1997	Steven Chu (born 1948)	United States	"For their development of methods for cooling and trapping atoms with the help of laser light "
	Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (* 1933)	France (born in Constantine , French Algeria )
	William Daniel Phillips (* 1948)	United States
1998	Robert Betts Laughlin (* 1950)	United States	"For their discovery of a new type of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations "
	Horst Ludwig Störmer (* 1949)	Germany
	Daniel Chee Tsui (* 1939)	United States (born in Henan , China )
1999	Gerardus' t Hooft (* 1946)	Netherlands	"For their decisive, quantum structure-related contributions to the theory of electroweak interaction in physics"
	Martinus JG Veltman (* 1931)	Netherlands
2000	Shores Alfjorow (1930-2019)	Russia	"For the development of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed and optoelectronics "
	Herbert Kroemer (* 1928)	Germany
	Jack Kilby (1923-2005)	United States	"For his part in the development of the integrated circuit "

2001 to 2010

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize	image
2001	Eric Allin Cornell (born 1961)	United States	"For the generation of the Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases from alkali atoms , and for early fundamental studies on the properties of the condensates"
	Wolfgang Ketterle (* 1957)	Germany
	Carl Edwin Wieman (* 1951)	United States
2002	Raymond Davis junior (1914-2006)	United States	"For groundbreaking work in astrophysics , especially for the detection of cosmic neutrinos "
	Masatoshi Koshiba (* 1926)	Japan
	Riccardo Giacconi (1931-2018)	United States (born in Genoa , Italy )	"For groundbreaking work in astrophysics that led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources" ( X-ray astronomy )
2003	Alexei Abrikossow (1928-2017)	United States Russia	"For groundbreaking work in the theory of superconductors and superfluids "
	Witali Ginsburg (1916-2009)	Russia
	Anthony James Leggett (born 1938)	United Kingdom United States
2004	David Gross (* 1941)	United States	"For the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of strong interaction "
	David Politzer (* 1949)	United States
	Frank Wilczek (* 1951)	United States
2005	Roy Jay Glauber (1925-2018)	United States	"For his contribution to the quantum mechanical theory of optical coherence "
	John Lewis Hall (born 1934)	United States	"For their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including optical frequency comb technology "
	Theodor Hänsch (* 1941)	Germany
2006	John Cromwell Mather (* 1946)	United States	"For the investigation of cosmic background radiation "
	George Smoot (* 1945)	United States
2007	Albert Fert (* 1938)	France	"For the discovery of giant magnetoresistance " (GMR)
	Peter Grünberg (1939-2018)	Germany (born in Pilsen , now the Czech Republic )
2008	Yōichirō Nambu (1921-2015)	United States (born in Tokyo , Japan )	"For the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in elementary particle physics "
	Makoto Kobayashi (* 1944)	Japan	"For the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry, which predicts the existence of at least three quark families "
	Toshihide Masukawa (* 1940)	Japan
2009	Charles Kuen Kao (1933-2018)	United States United Kingdom (born in Shanghai , China )	"For his groundbreaking successes in the field of light transmission using fiber optics for optical communication"
	Willard Boyle (1924-2011)	United States (born in Amherst , Canada )	"For the invention of the CCD sensor "
	George Elwood Smith (born 1930)	United States
2010	Andre Geim (* 1958)	Netherlands , United Kingdom , born in Russia	"For basic experiments with the two-dimensional material graphene "
	Konstantin Novoselov (* 1974)	United Kingdom of Russia

2011 to 2020

year	person	country	Reason for awarding the prize		image
2011	Saul Perlmutter (* 1959)	United States	"For the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae "
	Brian P. Schmidt (* 1967)	United States
	Adam Riess (* 1969)	United States
2012	Serge Haroche (* 1944)	France	"For the development of groundbreaking experimental methods that make it possible to manipulate quantum systems"
	David Wineland (* 1944)	United States
2013	François Englert (* 1932)	Belgium	"For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism which contributes to our understanding of the origin of the mass of subatomic particles and which was recently confirmed by the discovery of the predicted elementary particle by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN "
	Peter Higgs (* 1929)	United Kingdom
2014	Isamu Akasaki (* 1929)	Japan	"For the invention of efficient, blue light emitting diodes , which enabled bright and energy-saving light sources"
	Hiroshi Amano (* 1960)	Japan
	Shuji Nakamura (* 1954)	United States (born in Ikata , Japan )
2015	Takaaki Kajita (* 1959)	Japan	"For the discovery of neutrino oscillations that show that neutrinos have a mass"
	Arthur McDonald (* 1943)	Canada
2016	David J. Thouless (1934-2019)	United Kingdom	"For theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological matter phases."
	F. Duncan M. Haldane (* 1951)	United Kingdom
	J. Michael Kosterlitz (* 1943)	United Kingdom and United States
2017	Rainer Weiss (* 1932)	United States (born in Berlin , Germany )	"For decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves ."
	Barry Barish (born 1936)	United States
	Kip Thorne (born 1940)	United States
2018	Arthur Ashkin (1922-2020)	United States	"For the development of optical tweezers and their application in biology".	"For groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics "
	Gérard Mourou (* 1944)	France	"For the development of a method with which high-energy, ultra-short optical pulses can be generated".
	Donna Strickland (born 1959)	Canada
2019	James Peebles (born 1935)	Canada , United States	"For theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology ".
	Michel Mayor (* 1942)	Switzerland	"For the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star ".
	Didier Queloz (* 1966)	Switzerland
2020	Roger Penrose (born 1931)	United Kingdom	"For the discovery that the formation of black holes is a robust prediction of general relativity ".
	Reinhard Genzel (* 1952)	Germany	"For the discovery of a supermassive compact object in the center of our galaxy".
	Andrea Ghez (* 1965)	United States

1901 to 1910 1911 to 1920 1921 to 1930 1931 to 1940 1941 to 1950 1951 to 1960 1961 to 1970 1971 to 1980 1981 to 1990 1991 to 2000 2001 to 2010 2011 to 2020

Distribution by country

nation	Number of awards counted as award winners (1)
United States	93.5
United Kingdom	26.5
Germany	24.5
France	14th
Russia and the former Soviet Union	10
Japan	9
Netherlands	8.5
Switzerland	5.5
Canada	4.5
Sweden	4th
Denmark	3
Italy	3
Austria	3
China	2
Belgium	1
India	1
Ireland	1
Pakistan	1
Total (as of award 2020)	215 award winners

Remarks:

⁽¹⁾ Prize winners who were citizens of two countries at the time of the award are counted halfway for both countries.

Distribution by continents

Prize winners who were citizens of two countries at the time of the award are counted halfway for both countries (as of 2020).

continent	Number of awards counted as award winners
Europe (including Russia and the former Soviet Union)	104
America	98
Asia (excluding Russia and the former Soviet Union)	13th
Africa	0
Oceania	0

Web links

Commons : Nobel Laureate in Physics  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Official list of Nobel Laureate in Physics (English)
• Information from the German Historical Museum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Country according to the information on nobelprize.org. The country may differ from the nationality of the laureate.
2. ↑ Listed under this name in the official lists of the Nobel Foundation. Today the name Bratislava is more common.
3. ↑ ^{a b} The money was given to the special fund for this price category.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} One third of the prize money was given to the main fund and two thirds to the special fund for this prize category.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} The country of origin of the 1957 award winners is noted in official lists as "China". At the time the award winners emigrated, China was still ruled by the Republic of China . At the time of the award, the Republic of China was still the official international representative of China in Taiwan .
6. ↑ Usually, places of birth are shown in the official lists of the Nobel Foundation if they are not in the specified country or were not under the sovereignty of this country at the time. However, this information is missing here.
7. ↑ Press release at nobelprize.org (accessed October 4, 2016).
8. ↑ Oral announcement of the award winners by Göran K. Hansson (video)
9. ↑ Press release at nobelprize.org (accessed October 3, 2017).
10. ↑ Oral announcement of the award winners by Göran K. Hansson (video)

This version was added to the selection of informative lists and portals on November 13, 2008 .