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Wolf Prize in Physics

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The Wolf Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Arts.

The Wolf Prizes in Physics and Chemistry are often considered the second-most prestigious awards in those fields, after the Nobel Prize.[1][2][3] The prize in physics has gained a reputation for identifying future winners of the Nobel Prize – from the 26 prizes awarded between 1978 and 2010, fourteen winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, five of those in the following year.[2]

Laureates

Year Laureate Country[lower-alpha 1] Citation Ref.
Image Name
1978 File:Chien-shiung Wu (1912-1997) (cropped).jpg Chien-Shiung Wu Template:Flag "For her persistent and successful exploration of the weak interaction which helped establish the precise form and the non conservation of parity for this new natural force." [4]
1979 File:George E Uhlenbeck.jpg George E. Uhlenbeck Template:Flag "For his discovery, jointly with the late Samuel A .Goudsmit, of the electron spin." [5]
File:Occhialini.jpg Giuseppe Occhialini Template:Flag "For his contributions to the discovery of electron pair production and of the charged pion." [6]
1980 Kenneth G. Wilson Template:Flag "For path breaking developments culminating in the general theory of the critical behavior at transitions between the different thermodynamic phases of matter." [7]
File:Professor Leo Kadanoff.jpg Leo P. Kadanoff [8]
Michael E. Fisher [9]
1981 File:Freeman Dyson at Harvard cropped.jpg Freeman J. Dyson Template:Flag "For their outstanding contributions to theoretical physics, especially in the development and application of the quantum theory of, fields." [10]
File:GerardtHooft.jpg Gerard 't Hooft Template:Flag [11]
File:VictorWeisskopft-LosAlamos.jpg Victor F. Weisskopf Template:Flag [12]
1982 File:Leon M. Lederman 1988.jpg Leon M. Lederman Template:Flag "For their experimental discovery of unexpected new particles establishing a third generation quarks and leptons." [13]
File:Martin Perl - tau.jpg Martin L. Perl [14]
1983 No award
1984 Erwin L. Hahn Template:Flag "For his discovery of nuclear spin echoes and for the phenomenon of self-induced transparency." [15]
Peter B. Hirsch Template:Flag "For his development of the utilization of the transmission electron microscope as a universal instrument to study the structure of crystalline matter." [16]
File:Maiman with the first laser.jpg Theodore H. Maiman Template:Flag "For his realization of the first operating laser, the pulsed three level ruby laser." [17]
1985 File:Conyers Herring.jpg Conyers Herring Template:Flag "For their major contributions to the fundamental theory of solids, especially of the behavior of electrons in metals." [18]
Philippe Nozières Template:Flag [19]
1986 Albert J. Libchaber Template:Flag "For his brilliant experimental demonstration of the transition to turbulence and chaos in dynamical systems." [20]
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum "For his pioneering theoretical studies demonstrating the universal character of non-linear systems, which has made possible the systematic study of chaos." [21]
1987 File:Rossi-bruno b.jpg Bruno B. Rossi Template:Flag "For the discovery of extra-solar X-ray sources and the elucidation of their physical processes." [22]
File:RiccardoGiacconi.jpg Riccardo Giacconi [23]
Herbert Friedman "For pioneering investigations in solar X-rays." [24]
1988 File:Roger Penrose, 1978 Sept (portion B).jpg Roger Penrose Template:Flag "For their brilliant development of the theory of general relativity, in which they have shown the necessity for cosmological singularities and have elucidated the physics of black holes. In this work they have greatly enlarged our understanding of the origin and possible fate of the Universe." [25]
File:Stephen Hawking.StarChild.jpg Stephen W. Hawking [26]
1989 No award
1990 File:DavidThouless 1995 UW.jpg David J. Thouless Template:Flag "For a wide variety of pioneering contributions to our understanding of the organization of complex condensed matter systems, de Gennes especially for his work on macromolecular matter and liquid crystals and Thouless for his on disordered and low-dimensional systems." [27]
File:Pierre-Gilles crop (cropped).jpg Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Template:Flag [28]
1991 File:2000 BNL Maurice Goldhaber.jpg Maurice Goldhaber Template:Flag "For their separate seminal contributions to nuclear and particle physics, particularly those concerning the weak interactions involving leptons." [29]
File:ETH-BIB-Telegdi, Valentine (1922-2006)-Portr 10203.tif Valentine L. Telegdi Template:Flag [30]
1992 File:2008JosephTaylor.jpg Joseph H. Taylor Jr. Template:Flag "For his discovery of an orbiting radio pulsar and its exploitation to verify the general theory of relativity to high precision." [31]
1993 File:Benoit Mandelbrot mg 1804-d.jpg Benoit B. Mandelbrot Template:Flag "By recognizing the widespread occurrence of fractals and developing mathematical tools for describing them, he has changed our view of nature." [32]
1994/5 File:Виталий Лазаревич Гинзбург.jpg Vitaly L. Ginzburg Template:Flag "For his contributions to the theory of superconductivity and to the theory of high-energy processes in astrophysics." [33]
File:YoichiroNambu (cropped).jpg Yoichiro Nambu Template:Flag "For his contribution to elementary particle theory, including recognition of the role played by spontaneous symmetry-breaking in analogy with superconductivity theory, and the discovery of the color symmetry of the strong interactions." [34]
1996/7 File:John Archibald Wheeler signed.jpg John A. Wheeler Template:Flag "For his seminal contributions to black holes physics, to quantum gravity, and to the theories of nuclear scattering and nuclear fission." [35]
1998 File:Michael Berry, Yerevan - Ashtarak, Armenia, FOP-2014, 03.09.2014 (cropped).jpg Michael V. Berry Template:Flag "For the discovery of quantum topological and geometrical phases, specifically the Aharonov-Bohm effect, the Berry phase, and their incorporation into many fields of physics" [36]
Yakir Aharonov Template:Flag
Template:Flag 		[37]
1999 File:Nobel Prize 2011-Nobel interviews KVA-DSC 8049.jpg Dan Shechtman Template:Flag "For the experimental discovery of quasi-crystals, non periodic solids having long-range order, which inspired the exploration of a new fundamental state of matter." [38]
2000 File:Masatoshi Koshiba 2002.jpg Masatoshi Koshiba Template:Flag "For their pioneering observations of astronomical phenomena by detection of neutrinos, thus creating the emerging field of neutrino astronomy." [39]
File:Raymond Davis, Jr 2001.jpg Raymond Davis Jr. Template:Flag [40]
2001 No award
2002/3 File:Nobel Laureate Sir Anthony James Leggett in 2007.jpg Anthony J. Leggett Template:Flag "For key insights into the broad range of condensed matter physics: Leggett on superfluidity of the light helium isotope and macroscopic quantum phenomena; and Halperin on two- dimensional melting, disordered systems and strongly interacting electrons." [41]
File:Bert Halperin.JPG Bertrand Halperin [42]
2004 File:Francois Englert.jpg François Englert Template:Flag "For pioneering work that has led to the insight of mass generation, whenever a local gauge symmetry is realized asymmetrically in the world of sub-atomic particles." [43]
File:Higgs, Peter (1929)3.jpg Peter Higgs Template:Flag [44]
File:Robert Brout (3x4 cropped).jpg Robert Brout Template:Flag [45]
2005 Daniel Kleppner Template:Flag "For groundbreaking work in atomic physics of hydrogenic systems, including research on the hydrogen maser, Rydberg atoms and Bose-Einstein condensation." [46]
2006/7 File:Fert-002 (cropped).jpg Albert Fert Template:Flag "For their independent discovery of the giant magnetoresistance phenomenon (GMR), thereby launching a new field of research and applications known as spintronics, which utilizes the spin of the electron to store and transport information." [47]
File:Peter Gruenberg 01.jpg Peter Grünberg Template:Flag [48]
2008 No award
2009 No award
2010 File:Alain-Aspect-ForMemRS (cropped).jpg Alain Aspect Template:Flag "For their fundamental conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, specifically an increasingly sophisticated series of tests of Bell’s inequalities or extensions there of using entangled quantum states." [49]
File:Anton Zeilinger blackboard (profile cropped).jpg Anton Zeilinger Template:Flag [50]
File:John Francis Clauser (cropped).jpg John F. Clauser Template:Flag [51]
2011 File:Harald Rose Dresden 2009-2.jpg Harald Rose Template:Flag "For their development of aberration-corrected electron microscopy, allowing the observation of individual atoms with picometer precision, thus revolutionizing materials science." [52]
File:The 2020 Kavli Prize Laureate Knut Urban signing the protocol (2022) (52337039956) (cropped).jpg Knut Urban [53]
File:The 2020 Kavli Prize Laureate Maximilian Haider signing the protocol (2022) (52337040506) (cropped).jpg Maximilian Haider [54]
2012 File:Bekenstein100 (cropped).JPG Jacob Bekenstein Template:Flag "For his work on astronomical super-massive objects called ‘black holes’ that showed they can possess a statistical-thermodynamic property called entropy even though the internal dynamics could not be known. This work created an entire field of black hole dynamics which has become a cornerstone in the important theoretical physics areas of quantum gravity and strings." [55]
2013 File:Prof Cirac office klein (cropped).jpg Juan Ignacio Cirac Template:Flag "For groundbreaking theoretical contributions to quantum information processing, quantum optics and the physics of quantum gases." [56]
File:Zoller Peter.jpg Peter Zoller Template:Flag [57]
2014 No award
2015 File:James Bjorken.jpg James D. Bjorken Template:Flag "For predicting scaling in deep inelastic scattering, leading to identification of nucleon’s pointlike constituents." [58]
File:RobertKirshnerIMG 2728x.jpg Robert P. Kirshner "For forging the path to supernova cosmology through his observations and insights." [59]
2016 File:Professor Joe Imry.jpg Yoseph Imry Template:Flag "For pioneering studies of the physics of mesoscopic and random systems." [60]
2017 File:Queloz profile (cropped).jpg Didier Queloz Template:Flag
Template:Flag 		"For the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star." [61]
File:Michel Mayor, 2012 (cropped).jpg Michel Mayor Template:Flag [62]
2018 File:Dr. Charles Bennett IBM Fellow (cropped).jpg Charles H. Bennett Template:Flag "For founding and advancing the fields of Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Teleportation." [63]
File:Gilles Brassard (2019) (cropped).jpg Gilles Brassard Template:Flag [64]
2019 No award
2020 Rafi Bistritzer Template:Flag "For pioneering theoretical and experimental work on twisted bilayer graphene." [65]
File:Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (born 1976) giving the 2024 Segré Lecture Magic Angle Graphene.png Pablo Jarillo-Herrero Template:Flag [66]
File:Allan MacDonald.jpg Allan H. MacDonald [67]
2021 File:Parisi Giorgio (3x4 cropped).jpg Giorgio Parisi Template:Flag "For ground-breaking discoveries in disordered systems, particle physics and statistical physics." [68]
2022 File:Anne LHuiller 01.JPG Anne L'Huillier Template:Flag "For pioneering contributions to ultrafast laser science and attosecond physics." [69]
Paul Corkum Template:Flag [70]
File:Ferenc Krausz (cropped).jpg Ferenc Krausz Template:Flag [71]
2023 No award
2024 File:Official portrait of Lord Rees of Ludlow crop 2.jpg Martin Rees Template:Flag "For fundamental contributions to high-energy astrophysics, galaxies and structure formation, and cosmology." [72]
2025 File:Jainendra Jain.jpg Jainendra K. Jain Template:Flag "For advancing our understanding of the surprising properties of two-dimensional electron systems in strong magnetic fields" [73]
Mordehai Heiblum Template:Flag [74]
James P. Eisenstein Template:Flag [75]

Number of laureates per country

Country Number
Template:USA 36
Template:GBR 7
Template:DEU 6
Template:ISR 6
Template:FRA 4
Template:CHE 3
Template:AUT 2
Template:BEL 2
Template:CAN 2
Template:ITA 2
Template:JPN 1
Template:NLD 1
Template:RUS 1
Template:SWE 1

See also

Notes

Template:Noteslist

References

  1. ↑ "Wolf prize goes to particle theorists" Archived 2012-02-17 at the Wayback Machine Physicsworld.com January 20, 2004
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Harris, Margaret (November 2010). "Gongs away". Physics World 23 (11): 46–47. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/23/11/46. w:Bibcode: 2010PhyW...23k..46H. 
  3. ↑ Basolo, F: From Coello to Inorganic Chemistry: A Lifetime of Reactions, page 65, Springer, 2002
  4. ↑ "Chien-Shiung Wu". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  5. ↑ "George E. Uhlenbeck". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  6. ↑ "Giuseppe Occhialini". Wolf Foundation. Archived from the original on 15 August 2025. Retrieved 28 November 2025.
  7. ↑ "Kenneth G. Wilson". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  8. ↑ "Leo P. Kadanoff". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  9. ↑ "Michael E. Fisher". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  10. ↑ "Freeman J. Dyson". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  11. ↑ "Gerard T. Hooft". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  12. ↑ "Victor J. Weisskopf". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  13. ↑ "Leon M. Lederman". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  14. ↑ "Martin L. Perl". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  15. ↑ "Erwin L. Hahn". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  16. ↑ "Peter B. Hirsch". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  17. ↑ "Theodore H. Maiman". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  18. ↑ "Conyers Herring". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  19. ↑ "Philippe Nozières". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  20. ↑ "Albert J. Libchaber". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  21. ↑ "Mitchell J. Feigenbaum". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  22. ↑ "Bruno B. Rossi". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  23. ↑ "Riccardo Giacconi". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  24. ↑ "Herbert Friedman". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  25. ↑ "Roger Penrose". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  26. ↑ "Stephen W. Hawking". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  27. ↑ "David J. Thouless". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  28. ↑ "Pierre-Gilles de Gennes". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  29. ↑ "Maurice Goldhaber". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  30. ↑ "Valentine L. Telegdi". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  31. ↑ "Joseph H. Taylor Jr". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  32. ↑ "Benoit B. Mandelbrot". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  33. ↑ "Vitaly L. Ginzburg". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  34. ↑ "Yoichiro Nambu". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  35. ↑ "John A. Wheeler". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  36. ↑ "Michael V. Berry". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  37. ↑ "Yakir Aharonov". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  38. ↑ "Dan Shechtman". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  39. ↑ "Masatoshi Koshiba". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  40. ↑ "Raymond Davis Jr". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  41. ↑ "Anthony J. Leggett". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  42. ↑ "Bertrand Halperin". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  43. ↑ "François Englert". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  44. ↑ "Peter Higgs". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  45. ↑ "Robert Brout". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  46. ↑ "Daniel Kleppner". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  47. ↑ "Albert Fert". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  48. ↑ "Peter Grünberg". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  49. ↑ "Alain Aspect". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  50. ↑ "Anton Zeilinger". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  51. ↑ "John F. Clauser". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  52. ↑ "Harald Rose". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  53. ↑ "Knut Urban". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  54. ↑ "Maximilian Haider". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  55. ↑ "Jacob Bekenstein". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  56. ↑ "Juan Ignacio Cirac". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  57. ↑ "Peter Zoller". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  58. ↑ "James D. Bjorken". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  59. ↑ "Robert P. Kirshner". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  60. ↑ "Yoseph Imry". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  61. ↑ "Didier Queloz". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  62. ↑ "Michel Mayor". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  63. ↑ "Charles H. Bennett". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  64. ↑ "Gilles Brassard". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  65. ↑ "Rafi Bistritzer". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  66. ↑ "Pablo Jarillo-Herrero". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  67. ↑ "Allan H. MacDonald". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  68. ↑ "Giorgio Parisi". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  69. ↑ "Anne L'Huillier". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  70. ↑ "Paul Corkum". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  71. ↑ "Ferenc Krausz". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  72. ↑ "Martin Rees". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  73. ↑ "Jainendra K. Jain". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  74. ↑ "Mordehai (Moty) Heiblum". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  75. ↑ "James P. Eisenstein". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2026.

Template:Wolf Prizes


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