Nobel Prize · Curated list
Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Niels Bohr and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
Most written-about first. Each description summarises the laureate's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
German-born theoretical physicist (1879–1955)
A theoretical physicist, born in Germany, known above all for his theory of relativity. He also made important contributions to quantum theory.
Wikidata · Photo: Oren Jack Turner, Public domain
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2
Polish-French physicist and chemist (1867–1934)
Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie, a physicist and chemist who was Polish and a naturalised French citizen. The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics went jointly to her and her husband, Pierre Curie, "for their joint researches on the radioactivity phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
3
Danish physicist (1885–1962)
Niels Henrik David Bohr, a Danish theoretical physicist whose foundational work on quantum theory and on how atoms are structured earned him the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was a philosopher too, and promoted scientific research.
Wikidata · Photo: The American Institute of Physics credits the photo [1] to AB Lagrelius & Westphal , which is the Swedish company used…, Public domain
4
German physicist (1858–1947)
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, a German theoretical physicist. His many contributions to theoretical physics came chiefly as the originator of quantum theory and as a founder of modern physics, which transformed how atomic and subatomic processes are understood.
Wikidata · Photo: Courtesy of the Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center., CC BY-SA 3.0
5
Italian-American physicist (1901–1954)
A physicist, Italian and a naturalised American, famed for creating Chicago Pile-1, the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, and for his part in the Manhattan Project. The Nobel Prize in Physics for 1938 was his, awarded "for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons".
Wikidata · Photo: Department of Energy-Office of Public Affairs, restored by Yann, Public domain
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6
Austrian physicist (1887–1961)
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, whose name is sometimes anglicised as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, an Austrian theoretical physicist who produced fundamental results in quantum theory. He is known above all for the Schrödinger equation, which gives a way to calculate a system's wave function and how it evolves over time.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
7
American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)
Richard Phillips Feynman, an American theoretical physicist. The 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics was divided between him, Shin'ichirō Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles".
Wikidata · Photo: Copyright Tamiko Thiel 1984, CC BY-SA 3.0
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8
German physicist (1845–1923)
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a German experimental physicist who generated and detected the electromagnetic radiation of the wavelengths known as X-rays. In 1901 he became the first person awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him."
Wikidata · Photo: Erwin Hanfstaengl, Public domain
9
German physicist (1901–1976)
Werner Karl Heisenberg, a German theoretical physicist, one of the chief pioneers of quantum mechanics and a leading scientist of Germany's nuclear programme in World War II.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 de
10
French physicist and chemist (1859–1906)
A French physicist and chemist who pioneered work in magnetism and crystallography. For their work on radioactivity, he and his wife, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, received half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1903.
11
Italian electrical engineer and inventor (1874–1937)
An Italian inventor, electrical engineer and politician, made 1st Marquess of Marconi, known for building a practical wireless telegraph that worked with radio waves. That work led to his being given most of the credit for inventing radio, and to his sharing the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1909 with Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy."
Wikidata · Photo: Pach Brothers, Public domain
12
British physicist (1902–1984)
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, an English theoretical physicist regarded as one of the founders of quantum mechanics. He laid the groundwork for quantum field theory and for quantum electrodynamics, a name he coined himself.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
13
German–British physicist (1882–1970)
A German–British theoretical physicist who played a key part in developing quantum mechanics. He also contributed to optics and solid-state physics, and in the 1920s and 1930s supervised the work of several notable physicists.
14
British physicist (1856–1940)
Sir Joseph John Thomson, a physicist from Britain, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1906 "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases."
Wikidata · Photo: Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain
15
Indian physicist (1888–1970)
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, an Indian physicist known for his work on how light scatters. With a spectrograph of his own design, he and his student K. S. Krishnan found that light passing through a transparent material changes wavelength when deflected.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
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16
Dutch physicist (1853–1928)
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, a theoretical physicist from the Netherlands. For discovering the Zeeman effect and explaining it in theory, he and Pieter Zeeman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1902. He derived the Lorentz transformation of special relativity, and the Lorentz force, the force a charged particle feels in an electromagnetic field.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
17
French physicist (1852–1908)
Antoine Henri Becquerel, a French experimental physicist. He discovered radioactivity, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1903 with Pierre and Marie Curie.
Wikidata · Photo: Paul Nadar / Adam Cuerden, Public domain
18
American physicist (1852–1931)
Albert Abraham Michelson, an American experimental physicist known for his work measuring the speed of light and, above all, for the Michelson–Morley experiment. His Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1907, made him the first American to win a Nobel Prize in a science.
Wikidata · Photo: The original uploader was Bunzil at English Wikipedia ., Public domain
19
American physicist (1868–1953)
Robert Andrews Millikan, an American experimental physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1923 "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown (Mondadori Publishers), Public domain
Austrian physicist (1900–1958)
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics. Nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle".
Wikidata · Photo: Bettina Katzenstein, CC BY-SA 4.0
21
German–American physicist (1906–1972)
A German–American theoretical physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1963 with Eugene Wigner and J. Hans D. Jensen. Half the prize went jointly to her and Jensen "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure."
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel foundation, Public domain
22
Dutch physicist (1865–1943)
A Dutch experimental physicist. For discovering the Zeeman effect and explaining it in theory, he and Hendrik Lorentz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1902.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
23
Dutch physicist (1837–1923)
A Dutch theoretical physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1910 "for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids." He began as a schoolteacher, and in 1877, when the University of Amsterdam was raised to the status of Municipal University, he became its first professor of physics.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel foundation ?, Public domain
24
British X-ray crystallographer (1862–1942)
Sir William Henry Bragg, a British X-ray crystallographer, and the only person to share a Nobel Prize with his own son: he and Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1915 "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays," a key step in the rise of X-ray crystallography.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel foundation, Public domain
25
French physicist (1892–1987)
A French aristocrat, the 7th Duc de Broglie, and a theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum theory. In his Ph.D. thesis of 1924 he proposed that electrons behave as waves, and that all matter has the properties of waves.
Wikidata · Photo: Agence Rol, Public domain
26
British physicist (1891–1974)
Sir James Chadwick, a British experimental physicist awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1935 for discovering the neutron. In 1941 he wrote the last draft of the MAUD Report, which spurred the U.S. government to start serious research on an atomic bomb.
Wikidata · Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Attribution
27
Soviet theoretical physicist (1908–1968)
Lev Davidovich Landau, a Soviet physicist who contributed fundamentally to many fields of theoretical physics. He was regarded as one of the last scientists at home in every branch of physics, and to all of them he made seminal contributions.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel foundation, Public domain
28
Hungarian–German physicist (1862–1947)
Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, a Hungarian–German experimental physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1905 for his work on cathode rays. That work led him to realise the photoelectric effect in experiment, finding that the energy (speed) of electrons thrown out of a cathode depends on the light's frequency alone, not its intensity.
Wikidata · Photo: Not mentioned in any source, Public domain
29
Hungarian-American physicist and mathematician (1902–1995)
Eugene Paul Wigner, a theoretical physicist, Hungarian-American, whose work extended into mathematical physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles".
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel foundation, Public domain
30
German physicist (1850–1918)
Karl Ferdinand Braun, a German applied physicist, joint winner with Guglielmo Marconi of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1909, for what they did to develop radio. His two-circuit system made long-range radio transmission, and modern telecommunications, possible.
Every Wikidata item that has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 30 are shown.
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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