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Science

Nobel Prize in Physics: Extraordinary phenomena

Invisible rays, fiery hot stars and atoms that'll make your hair fall out. Physics is the science of the unusual. Our gallery highlights the best of the best Nobel Prize winners.

  • default

    1901: When bones became visible

    The first Noble Prize in Physics was awarded to a German, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, for the discovery of x-rays. To this day, his discovery continues to bring broken bones to light or to root out painful tooth inflammations. The energy-rich rays can even identify cancer. Röntgen himself christened his discovery "x-rays," but in German, they're known today as "Röntgen rays."

  • default

    1903: Decaying atoms

    Frenchman Antoine Henri Becquerel figured out that the atomic nuclei of certain heavy metals - like uranium pictured here - spontaneously decayed, thereby releasing energy-rich rays. What Becquerel had discovered was radioactivity. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre delved further into the phenomenon, with the Nobel Prize later being awarded to all three.

  • default

    1921: Beams of light

    Amazingly, light is capable of dislodging tiny particles of metal. It was this photo-electric effect that Albert Einstein decided to look into further. Light and matter, he later said, are two sides of the same coin - and can even change from one to the other. Photons, in other words, can modify metal. Modern solar panels employ the same principle.

  • default

    1956: The origin of modern computing

    Owners of smartphones, laptops and iPads can tip their caps to three Americans: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. They built the first transistors: electronic circuits capable of lightning-quick changes from one condition to another. Computer processors such as this one here are comprised of millions of such circuits.

  • default

    1964: Bundling light

    Aim a cluster of similar light rays in one direction and - voilà! - you've got a laser. Beyond light shows, lasers can cut metal and burn off skin lesions. For their contributions to laser technology, American Charles Townes and Russians Nikolai Bassov and Alexander Prokhorov received the Nobel Prize.

  • default

    1967: Star fire

    Why do stars actually produce as much heat as they do? American Hans Bethe, originally born in Strasbourg, France, took a look at our own sun to answer that question. What he found was that stars "melt" hydrogen atoms into larger helium atoms. Atomic fusion, as it's known, releases huge amounts of energy - bathing our planet, for example, in sunlight.

  • default

    1971: Three-dimensional images

    Holograms were the brainchild of a Hungarian engineer named Dennis Gábor. For the first time, he constructed images in three dimensions. The pictures appear to float in space and to change form at the blink of an eye. But they're not just beautiful to look at. They're a useful anti-counterfeiting measure on modern currencies.

  • default

    1986: Rendering the tiny visible

    Glimpses into the realm of the teeny-tiny are thanks to Ernst Ruska of Germany, the inventor of the electron microscope. His microscope is what makes shots like this one (a flea) so vivid. The resolution is 1,000 times higher than that of a comparable light microscope.

  • default

    1988: Lightweight elementary particles

    Yes, neutrinos exist. And with the help of a particle accelerator, Americans Leon Max Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger found evidence that proved the existence of these extremely light buildings blocks of matter. Neutrinos almost never interact with particles on planet earth, making their experimental detection costly.

  • default

    1989: Do you know exactly what time it is?

    The foundation for extreme time-telling was laid by American Norman Ramsey. He helped to create the world's most exact time-piece: the atomic clock. Over the course of one year, such a clock's accuracy is compromised by only 25 billionths of a second. Four atomic clocks are located in Braunschweig, Germany, together setting the country's official time.

  • default

    2007: Big hard drives in small places

    Hard drives on laptops are getting smaller and smaller and smaller - and yet they manage to pack in ever-increasing data. The reason? Tremendous magnetic resistance. The effect was discovered by Peter Grünberg of Germany and Albert Fert of France, both of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize for it.

  • default

    2009: No more dial-up modems

    Charles Kuen Kao, an American physicist of Chinese descent, developed the fiber optic cable. Information from a website or a telephone conversation is converted into ultra-short flashes of light, which are then deciphered back into electric impulses on the other end. Kao's cables deliver information quickly and, crucially, do not bleed data along the way.

  • default

    2011: Our faster-expanding universe

    That the universe will grow ever larger, ever faster was demonstrated by Americans Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess. The three scientists can't say why the universe will do so. But whoever manages to answer that question will surely have a good shot at the next Nobel Prize in Physics.

  • default

    2013: The origins of mass

    Theoretical physicists François Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of Britain received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to particle physics. Theories they proposed independently of one other in the 1960s were confirmed in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs boson particle explains the origin of mass and fills a hole in the Standard Model of particle physics.

  • Blue-white LEDs

    2014: Let there be (blue) light!

    Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura were awarded the Physics Nobel for their development of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). This made white LEDs possible as bright and above all energy-saving light sources.

  • A Bosch ultra-short pulse laser removing material from a metal surface

    2018: Ultra-short laser pulses and optical tweezers

    Lasers have become an indispensable part of our lives. With their research, Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou laid the foundation for ultra-short pulse lasers. This allows materials to be processed more finely than with any other tool. The two shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Arthur Ashkin, who had developed optical tweezers for investigating biological samples.

  • Exoplanet 1f um Trappist-1. An artist image by NASA/JPL-Caltech.

    2019: The discovery of exoplanets

    James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz have been awarded the Prize for their research on exoplanets and cosmology. In a statement, the Academy said the trio received the award for their "new understanding of the universe's structure and history." Since Mayor and Queloz discovered the first planet outside our solar system in October 1995, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered.


  • default

    1901: When bones became visible

    The first Noble Prize in Physics was awarded to a German, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, for the discovery of x-rays. To this day, his discovery continues to bring broken bones to light or to root out painful tooth inflammations. The energy-rich rays can even identify cancer. Röntgen himself christened his discovery "x-rays," but in German, they're known today as "Röntgen rays."

  • default

    1903: Decaying atoms

    Frenchman Antoine Henri Becquerel figured out that the atomic nuclei of certain heavy metals - like uranium pictured here - spontaneously decayed, thereby releasing energy-rich rays. What Becquerel had discovered was radioactivity. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre delved further into the phenomenon, with the Nobel Prize later being awarded to all three.

  • default

    1921: Beams of light

    Amazingly, light is capable of dislodging tiny particles of metal. It was this photo-electric effect that Albert Einstein decided to look into further. Light and matter, he later said, are two sides of the same coin - and can even change from one to the other. Photons, in other words, can modify metal. Modern solar panels employ the same principle.

  • default

    1956: The origin of modern computing

    Owners of smartphones, laptops and iPads can tip their caps to three Americans: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. They built the first transistors: electronic circuits capable of lightning-quick changes from one condition to another. Computer processors such as this one here are comprised of millions of such circuits.

  • default

    1964: Bundling light

    Aim a cluster of similar light rays in one direction and - voilà! - you've got a laser. Beyond light shows, lasers can cut metal and burn off skin lesions. For their contributions to laser technology, American Charles Townes and Russians Nikolai Bassov and Alexander Prokhorov received the Nobel Prize.

  • default

    1967: Star fire

    Why do stars actually produce as much heat as they do? American Hans Bethe, originally born in Strasbourg, France, took a look at our own sun to answer that question. What he found was that stars "melt" hydrogen atoms into larger helium atoms. Atomic fusion, as it's known, releases huge amounts of energy - bathing our planet, for example, in sunlight.

  • default

    1971: Three-dimensional images

    Holograms were the brainchild of a Hungarian engineer named Dennis Gábor. For the first time, he constructed images in three dimensions. The pictures appear to float in space and to change form at the blink of an eye. But they're not just beautiful to look at. They're a useful anti-counterfeiting measure on modern currencies.

  • default

    1986: Rendering the tiny visible

    Glimpses into the realm of the teeny-tiny are thanks to Ernst Ruska of Germany, the inventor of the electron microscope. His microscope is what makes shots like this one (a flea) so vivid. The resolution is 1,000 times higher than that of a comparable light microscope.

  • default

    1988: Lightweight elementary particles

    Yes, neutrinos exist. And with the help of a particle accelerator, Americans Leon Max Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger found evidence that proved the existence of these extremely light buildings blocks of matter. Neutrinos almost never interact with particles on planet earth, making their experimental detection costly.

  • default

    1989: Do you know exactly what time it is?

    The foundation for extreme time-telling was laid by American Norman Ramsey. He helped to create the world's most exact time-piece: the atomic clock. Over the course of one year, such a clock's accuracy is compromised by only 25 billionths of a second. Four atomic clocks are located in Braunschweig, Germany, together setting the country's official time.

  • default

    2007: Big hard drives in small places

    Hard drives on laptops are getting smaller and smaller and smaller - and yet they manage to pack in ever-increasing data. The reason? Tremendous magnetic resistance. The effect was discovered by Peter Grünberg of Germany and Albert Fert of France, both of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize for it.

  • default

    2009: No more dial-up modems

    Charles Kuen Kao, an American physicist of Chinese descent, developed the fiber optic cable. Information from a website or a telephone conversation is converted into ultra-short flashes of light, which are then deciphered back into electric impulses on the other end. Kao's cables deliver information quickly and, crucially, do not bleed data along the way.

  • default

    2011: Our faster-expanding universe

    That the universe will grow ever larger, ever faster was demonstrated by Americans Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess. The three scientists can't say why the universe will do so. But whoever manages to answer that question will surely have a good shot at the next Nobel Prize in Physics.

  • default

    2013: The origins of mass

    Theoretical physicists François Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of Britain received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to particle physics. Theories they proposed independently of one other in the 1960s were confirmed in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs boson particle explains the origin of mass and fills a hole in the Standard Model of particle physics.

  • Blue-white LEDs

    2014: Let there be (blue) light!

    Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura were awarded the Physics Nobel for their development of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). This made white LEDs possible as bright and above all energy-saving light sources.

  • A Bosch ultra-short pulse laser removing material from a metal surface

    2018: Ultra-short laser pulses and optical tweezers

    Lasers have become an indispensable part of our lives. With their research, Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou laid the foundation for ultra-short pulse lasers. This allows materials to be processed more finely than with any other tool. The two shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Arthur Ashkin, who had developed optical tweezers for investigating biological samples.

  • Exoplanet 1f um Trappist-1. An artist image by NASA/JPL-Caltech.

    2019: The discovery of exoplanets

    James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz have been awarded the Prize for their research on exoplanets and cosmology. In a statement, the Academy said the trio received the award for their "new understanding of the universe's structure and history." Since Mayor and Queloz discovered the first planet outside our solar system in October 1995, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered.


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