Names of Nobel Prize winners in physics. According to the will of Alfred Nobel, the prize is awarded to the one "who makes the most important discovery or invention" in this field.

The editors of TASS-DOSIER have prepared material on the procedure for awarding this award and its laureates.

Awarding and nominating candidates

The prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, located in Stockholm. Its working body is the Nobel Committee for Physics, consisting of five to six members who are elected by the Academy for three years.

Scientists from different countries have the right to nominate candidates for the award, including members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize winners in physics, who received special invitations from the committee. You can propose candidates from September until January 31 of the following year. Then the Nobel Committee, with the help of scientific experts, selects the most worthy candidates, and in early October, the Academy selects the laureate by a majority of votes.

Laureates

William Roentgen (Germany) was the first to receive the prize in 1901 for the discovery of radiation named after him. Among the most famous laureates are Joseph Thomson (Great Britain), noted in 1906 for his research on the passage of electricity through gases; Albert Einstein (Germany), who received a prize in 1921 for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect; Niels Bohr (Denmark), awarded in 1922 for research on the atom; John Bardeen (USA), two-time winner of the award (1956 - for research on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect and 1972 - for the creation of the theory of superconductivity).

To date, there are 203 people on the list of awardees (including John Bardeen, who was awarded twice). Only two women were awarded this prize: in 1903, Marie Curie shared it with her husband Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel (for the study of the phenomenon of radioactivity), and in 1963 Maria Goppert-Mayer (USA) received the award together with Eugene Wigner (USA). ) and Hans Jensen (Germany) for their work on the structure of the atomic nucleus.

Among the laureates are 12 Soviet and Russian physicists, as well as scientists who were born and educated in the USSR and took second citizenship. In 1958, Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank, and Igor Tamm received the prize for their discovery of the radiation of charged particles moving at superluminal speeds. Lev Landau in 1962 became a laureate for the theory of condensed matter and liquid helium. Since Landau was in the hospital after severe injuries sustained in a car accident, the prize was presented to him in Moscow by the Swedish Ambassador to the USSR.

Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were awarded the prize in 1964 for the creation of a maser (quantum amplifier). Their work in this area was first published in 1954. In the same year, the American scientist Charles Towns, independently of them, came to similar results, as a result, all three received the Nobel Prize.

In 1978, Pyotr Kapitsa was awarded for the discovery of low temperatures in physics (the scientist began to study this area in the 1930s). In 2000, Zhores Alferov became a laureate for developments in semiconductor technology (shared the award with the German physicist Herbert Kremer). In 2003, Vitaly Ginzburg and Alexei Abrikosov, who became an American citizen in 1999, were awarded a prize for fundamental work on the theory of superconductors and superfluid liquids (British-American physicist Anthony Leggett shared the award with them).

In 2010, the prize was given to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who conducted experiments with the two-dimensional material graphene. The technology for obtaining graphene was developed by them in 2004. Geim was born in 1958 in Sochi, and left the USSR in 1990, subsequently obtaining citizenship of the Netherlands. Konstantin Novoselov was born in 1974 in Nizhny Tagil, in 1999 he left for the Netherlands, where he began working with Game, and later he was granted British citizenship.

In 2016, the prize was awarded to British physicists working in the USA: David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz "for their theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter".

Statistics

In 1901-2016, the prize in physics was awarded 110 times (in 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940-1942 it was not possible to find a worthy candidate). The prize was shared 32 times between two laureates and 31 times between three. The average age of the laureates is 55 years. Until now, the 25-year-old Englishman Lawrence Bragg (1915) remains the youngest winner in physics, and the 88-year-old American Raymond Davis (2002) remains the oldest.

"Static Electricity" - For thousands of years, our ancestors walked the earth barefoot, grounding themselves naturally. Accumulation of static electricity. Synthetic Rubber Shoes. Getting rid of static electricity. Excess electricity must be removed from the body by grounding. Humidify the air in the room with a spray bottle and wipe it once a day with a damp cloth.

"Electric current" - Current source. Voltmeter laboratory. Electric current power. The work of electric current. electrical voltage. Einstein. Voltmeter. Ohm's law for a circuit section. Electric field. Interaction of charged bodies. Parallel connection of conductors. Ohm Georg Simon (1787-1854) - German physicist.

"Measuring Instruments" - A thermometer is a glass instrument for measuring air temperature. Measuring instruments. Barometer. Device. The manometer works due to elasticity. Silomer. To measure means to compare one quantity with another. Dynamometer. The purpose of the dynamometer. Devices make life very easy. One division at the pressure gauge is the atmosphere.

"Law of conservation of momentum" - The law of conservation of momentum underlies jet propulsion. Virtual verification of the momentum conservation law. How does the momentum of a body change during interaction? Examples of application of the momentum conservation law. Where does the law of conservation of momentum apply? What is the significance of Tsiolkovsky's work for astronautics?

"K.E. Tsiolkovsky" - Above his grave in the center of the park in 1936. triangular obelisk. The versatility of Tsiolkovsky's scientific work is striking. September 19, 1935 the scientist died. In 1967 The State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics named after I.I. K.E. Tsiolkovsky Tsiolkovsky was born on September 5 (17), 1857. The idea of ​​creating a rocket engine running on liquid fuel belongs to Tsiolkovsky.

"Thermodynamics" - The second law of thermodynamics. Entropy is an additive quantity. Phase transition "liquid - gas". The entropy S is equal to the sum of the entropies of the bodies included in the system. Entropy changes in reversible and irreversible processes. From the considered Carnot cycle. Reduced heat. Entropy is a probabilistic statistic.

There are 25 presentations in total in the topic

In the history of world science, it is difficult to find a scientist of the same magnitude as Albert Einstein. However, his path to fame and recognition was not easy. Suffice it to say that Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize only after he was unsuccessfully nominated for it more than 10 times.

Brief biographical note

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the German city of Ulm into a middle-class Jewish family. His father was first engaged in the production of mattresses, and after moving to Munich, he opened a company that sold electrical equipment.

At the age of 7, Albert was sent to a Catholic school, and then to a gymnasium, which today bears the name of the great scientist. According to the memoirs of classmates and teachers, he did not show much zeal for study and had high marks only in mathematics and Latin. In 1896, on the second attempt, Einstein entered the Zurich Polytechnic at the Faculty of Education, as he later wanted to work as a physics teacher. There he devoted much time to the study of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. Although it was already impossible not to notice Einstein's outstanding abilities, by the time he received his diploma, none of the teachers wanted to see him as his assistant. Subsequently, the scientist noted that at the Zurich Polytechnic he was obstructed and bullied for his independent character.

The beginning of the path to world fame

After graduation, Albert Einstein could not find a job for a long time and even starved. However, it was during this period that he wrote and published his first work.

In 1902, the future great scientist began working at the Patent Office. After 3 years, he published 3 articles in the leading German journal Annals of Physics, which were later recognized as harbingers of the scientific revolution. In them, he outlined the foundations of the theory of relativity, the fundamental quantum theory, from which Einstein's theory of the photoelectric effect later emerged, and his ideas regarding the statistical description of Brownian motion.

Einstein's revolutionary ideas

All 3 articles of the scientist, published in 1905 in the Annals of Physics, became the subject of heated discussion among colleagues. The ideas he presented to the scientific community certainly deserved to win Albert Einstein the Nobel Prize. However, they were not immediately recognized in academic circles. If some scientists unconditionally supported their colleague, then there was a rather large group of physicists who, being experimenters, demanded to present the results of empirical research.

Nobel Prize

Shortly before his death, the famous arms magnate wrote a will, according to which all his property was transferred to a special fund. This organization was supposed to conduct a selection of candidates and annually present large cash prizes to those "who have brought the greatest benefit to mankind" by making a significant discovery in the field of physics, chemistry, as well as physiology or medicine. In addition, prizes were awarded to the creator of the most outstanding work in the field of literature, as well as for his contribution to the rallying of nations, the reduction of the size of the armed forces and "the promotion of peaceful congresses."

In his will, Nobel demanded in a separate paragraph that when nominating candidates, their nationality should not be taken into account, as he did not want his prize to be politicized.

The first Nobel Prize ceremony took place in 1901. Over the next decade, such outstanding physicists as:

• Hendrik Lorenz;
• Peter Zeeman;
• Antoine Becquerel;
• Marie Curie;
• John William Strett;
• Philip Lenard;
• Joseph John Thomson;
• Albert Abraham Michelson;
• Gabriel Lippman;
• Guglielmo Marconi;
• Karl Brown.

Albert Einstein and the Nobel Prize: First Nomination

For the first time the great scientist was nominated for this award in 1910. Wilhelm Ostwald became his "godfather" in the field of chemistry. Interestingly, 9 years before this event, the latter refused to hire Einstein. In his presentation, he emphasized that the theory of relativity is deeply scientific and physical, and not just philosophical reasoning, as Einstein's detractors tried to present it. In subsequent years, Ostwald repeatedly defended this point of view, repeatedly putting it forward over several years.

The Nobel Committee rejected Einstein's candidacy, with the wording that the theory of relativity does not exactly meet any of these criteria. In particular, it was noted that one should wait for its more explicit experimental confirmation.

Be that as it may, in 1910 the prize was awarded to Jan van der Waals for deriving the equation of state for gases and liquids.

Nominations in subsequent years

For the next 10 years, Albert Einstein was nominated for the Nobel Prize almost every year, with the exception of 1911 and 1915. At the same time, the theory of relativity was always indicated as a work that was worthy of such a prestigious award. This circumstance was the reason that even contemporaries often doubted how many Nobel Prizes Einstein received.

Unfortunately, 3 out of 5 members of the Nobel Committee were from the Swedish Uppsala University, known for its powerful scientific school, whose representatives achieved great success in improving measuring instruments and experimental techniques. They were extremely suspicious of pure theorists. Their “victim” was not only Einstein. The Nobel Prize was never awarded to the outstanding scientist Henri Poincare, and Max Planck received it in 1919 after much discussion.

Solar eclipse

As already mentioned, most physicists demanded experimental confirmation of the theory of relativity. However, at that time it was not possible to do this. The sun helped. The fact is that in order to verify the correctness of Einstein's theory, it was required to predict the behavior of an object with a huge mass. For these purposes, the Sun was the best suited. It was decided to find out the position of the stars during the solar eclipse that was supposed to occur in November 1919, and compare them with the "ordinary". The results were supposed to confirm or refute the presence of a space-time distortion, which is a consequence of the theory of relativity.

Expeditions were organized to the island of Princip and to the tropics of Brazil. Measurements taken during the 6 minutes that the eclipse lasted were studied by Eddington. As a result, Newton's classical theory of inertial space was defeated and gave way to Einstein's.

Confession

1919 was the year of Einstein's triumph. Even Lorenz, who had previously been skeptical of his ideas, recognized their value. Simultaneously with Niels Bohr and 6 other scientists who had the right to nominate colleagues for the Nobel Prize, he spoke out in support of Albert Einstein.

However, politics intervened. Although it was clear to everyone that the most deserved candidate was Einstein, the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1920 was awarded to Charles Edouard Guillaume for his research on anomalies in nickel and steel alloys.

However, the debate continued, and it was obvious that the world community would not understand if the scientist was left without a well-deserved reward.

Nobel Prize and Einstein

In 1921, the number of scientists who proposed the candidature of the creator of the theory of relativity reached its climax. Einstein was supported by 14 people who officially had the right to nominate applicants. One of the most authoritative members of the Royal Society of Sweden, Eddington, in his letter even compared him to Newton and pointed out that he was superior to all his contemporaries.

Nevertheless, the Nobel Committee commissioned Alvar Gulstrand, the 1911 medical laureate, to give a talk on the value of the theory of relativity. This scientist, being a professor of ophthalmology at Uppsala University, sharply and illiterately criticized Einstein. In particular, he argued that the bending of a light beam could not be considered a true test of Albert Einstein's theory. He also urged not to consider observations made about the orbits of Mercury as evidence. In addition, he was especially outraged by the fact that the length of the measuring ruler can vary depending on whether the observer is moving or not, and at what speed he does it.

As a result, the Nobel Prize was not awarded to Einstein in 1921, and it was decided not to award anyone.

1922

The theoretical physicist Carl Wilhelm Oseen from the University of Uppsala helped save face for the Nobel Committee. He proceeded from the fact that it does not matter at all for which Einstein receives the Nobel Prize. In this regard, he proposed to award it "for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."

Oseen also advised the committee members that it is not just Einstein who should be awarded during the 22nd ceremony. The Nobel Prize was not awarded in the year preceding 1921, according to uh it became possible to note the merits of two scientists at once. The second laureate was Niels Bohr.

Einstein missed the official Nobel Prize ceremony. He delivered his speech later, and it was devoted to the theory of relativity.

Now you know why Einstein received the Nobel Prize. Time has shown the significance of the discoveries of this scientist for world science. Even if Einstein had not been awarded the Nobel Prize, he would still go down in the annals of world history as a man who changed the ideas of mankind about space and time.

Albert Einstein was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Physics, but the members of the Nobel Committee for a long time did not dare to award the prize to the author of such a revolutionary theory as the theory of relativity. In the end, a diplomatic solution was found: the prize for 1921 was awarded to Einstein for the theory of the photoelectric effect, that is, for the most indisputable and well-tested work in the experiment; however, the text of the decision contained a neutral addition: "and for other work in theoretical physics".

“As I already informed you by telegram, the Royal Academy of Sciences at its meeting yesterday decided to award you the prize in physics for the past (1921) year, thereby acknowledging your work in theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, without taking into account your work on the theory of relativity and the theory of gravity, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future.

Naturally, Einstein devoted the traditional Nobel speech to the theory of relativity.
In September 1905, Albert Einstein published the famous work “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Media”, devoted to the theory describing motion, the laws of mechanics and space-time relations at speeds close to the speed of light. Subsequently, this theory was called the special theory of relativity.

Many scientists considered the "new physics" too revolutionary. It canceled the ether, absolute space and absolute time, revised Newton's mechanics, which served as the basis of physics for 200 years. Time in the theory of relativity flows differently in different frames of reference, inertia and length depend on speed, movement faster than light is impossible - all these unusual consequences were unacceptable to the conservative part of the scientific community.

Einstein himself treated the mistrust of colleagues with humor, his statement in the French Philosophical Society at the Sorbonne, April 6, 1922, is known: “If the theory of relativity is confirmed, then the Germans will say that I am a German, and the French that I am a citizen of the world; but if my theory is refuted, the French will declare me a German, and the Germans a Jew.

In 1915, Einstein created a mathematical model of the General Theory of Relativity, which considers the curvature of space and time.
The new theory predicted two previously unknown physical effects, fully confirmed by observations, and also accurately and completely explained the secular shift of Mercury's perihelion, which had long baffled astronomers. After that, the theory of relativity became practically the universally recognized foundation of modern physics. In addition, general relativity has found practical application in GPS global positioning systems, where coordinates are calculated with very significant relativistic corrections.

The thesis of the discreteness of electromagnetic radiation, put forward by Einstein in 1905, allowed him to explain two mysteries of the photoelectric effect: why the photocurrent did not arise at any frequency of light, but only starting from a certain threshold, and the energy and speed of the emitted electrons did not depend on the intensity of the light, but only on its frequencies. Einstein's theory of the photoelectric effect corresponded to experimental data with high accuracy, which was later confirmed by the experiments of Millikan (1916). It was for these scientific discoveries that Einstein received the Nobel Prize.

Albert Einstein , without any doubt, is one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century. Perhaps that is why a lot of rumors and myths have always circulated around his figure, many of which are still popular, although they do not correspond to reality at all.

I bring to your attention a small note in which an attempt is made to refute a couple of such persistent false ideas about the personality of the great physicist.

I assure you that I am not going to lure anyone into deep theoretical jungle in this note, especially since I myself know little about physics (only at the level of a long-forgotten school curriculum). To make sure of this, I will begin my post with an anecdote about Einstein (and end it with an anecdote).

An American journalist once interviewed Einstein.
What is the difference between time and eternity? she asked.
- Dear child, - Einstein answered good-naturedly, - if I had time to explain this difference to you, it would be an eternity before you would understand it ..

Try to ask someone Why did Albert Einstein win the Nobel Prize? . Most likely they will answer you what kind of creation theory of relativity .
In fact, this is not at all the case.

Albert Einstein in 1921
(Einstein's Nobel Prize was awarded precisely for 1921)

Nobel committee in 1922 awarded Einstein the prize for discovery of the laws of the photoelectric effect (and confirmation by this of the quantum theory of Max Planck).
However, Albert Einstein had previously been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times (and precisely for the theory of relativity) - in 1910, 1911 and 1915. But the members of the Nobel Committee found Einstein's work so revolutionary that they hesitated to acknowledge it.

This is best seen in a letter to Einstein from the Secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Christopher Aurivillius, dated November 10, 1922: "As I have already informed you by telegram, the Royal Academy of Sciences at its yesterday's meeting decided to award you the prize in physics for the past year, thus acknowledging your work in theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, without taking into account your work on the theory of relativity and the theory of gravity, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future".

Among modern schoolchildren-losers (of those who are ordinary lazy people, who are not deprived of intellectual abilities, otherwise they would not even know the name of a physicist) has long been walking the story that Einstein did poorly in school and even failed a math exam. Apparently, they are trying to justify themselves with this: you see, Einstein was, like me, a loser, and then he became a great scientist! And I can, look here!

I hasten to disappoint them.

Einstein's grades in both mathematics and physics were beyond praise. Another thing is that he was intolerant of cane discipline that reigned in the Munich Gymnasium (now, by the way, it bears his name). According to Einstein, the teachers of junior classes reminded him of sergeant majors in their behavior, and senior teachers - of lieutenants. The teachers didn’t particularly like him either, because the behavior of the obstinate student called into question the entire harmonious education system at the school. It was because of this that he earned a reputation as a bad student, and not because of a lack of knowledge or ability to think.

Albert Einstein's certificate from the Swiss school in Aarau in 1879
(ratings are given on a 6-point scale). As you can see, in algebra, geometry and physics
the highest scores are given, and the "troika" is only in French:

In fairness, it should also be noted that among the legends about the great scientist there are stories that, quite likely, could actually happen to him.

So, they write that once he opened the book and found in it as a bookmark an unused check for one and a half thousand dollars. This could well have happened, since in everyday life Einstein was extremely absent-minded. It is said that he did not even remember his home address - 112 Mercer Street, Princeton, New Jersey.

It is possible that the following anecdotal story is also true:

Albert Einstein in his youth liked to walk around in one tattered jacket.
- How do you dress so casually, what will they say about you? the neighbors wondered.
- Why, - Einstein asked again, - no one here knows me anyway.
Thirty years have passed. Einstein wore the same jacket.
- Why do you dress so casually, what will they say about you? - the new neighbors were already surprised.
- And what? - asked the already famous physicist. - Everyone here knows me!

Thank you for attention.
Sergei Vorobyov.