Physics
Physics describes the rules everything else obeys. The laureates and experimentalists here produced relativity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism and nuclear science — the direct ancestors of GPS, semiconductors, MRI scanners and the power grid.
32 indexed lives · 15 Nobel laureates · 16 countries
Where to start
Marie Skłodowska-Curie
1867 – 1934The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
Ernest Rutherford
1871 – 1937Found the atomic nucleus and split the atom.
Albert Einstein
1879 – 1955Rewrote space, time, gravity and light in a single year of work.
Nobel recognition in Physics
- Max Planck
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Nobel Prize in Physics 1903; Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911
- Ernest Rutherford
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1908
- Guglielmo Marconi
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1909
- Albert Einstein
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1921
- Niels Bohr
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922
- Erwin Schrödinger
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933
- C. V. Raman
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1930
- Werner Heisenberg
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1932
- Hideki Yukawa
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1949
- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1983
- Maurice Wilkins
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962
- Richard Feynman
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965
- Abdus Salam
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979
- Peter Higgs
Nobel Prize in Physics, 2013
Physics across the centuries
6th–14th century · 1
15th–17th century · 4
18th century · 6
19th century · 13
- James Clerk Maxwell1831 – 1879
- Nikola Tesla1856 – 1943
- Max Planck1858 – 1947
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie1867 – 1934
- Ernest Rutherford1871 – 1937
- Guglielmo Marconi1874 – 1937
- Lise Meitner1878 – 1968
- Albert Einstein1879 – 1955
- Emmy Noether1882 – 1935
- Niels Bohr1885 – 1962
- Erwin Schrödinger1887 – 1961
- C. V. Raman1888 – 1970
- Satyendra Nath Bose1894 – 1974