Wolf Prize in Physics
Encyclopedia
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 Prize is often considered the most prestigious award in physics
after the Nobel Prize
.
Wolf Foundation
The Wolf Foundation is a private not-for-profit organization in Israel established in 1975 by Dr. Ricardo Wolf, a German-born Jewish Cuban inventor and former Cuban ambassador to Israel.- Ricardo Wolf :...
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture
Wolf Prize in Agriculture
The Wolf Prize in Agriculture 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 Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and the Arts...
, Chemistry
Wolf Prize in Chemistry
The Wolf Prize in Chemistry 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, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Arts.-Laureates:...
, Mathematics
Wolf Prize in Mathematics
The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually 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, Medicine, Physics and Arts...
, Medicine
Wolf Prize in Medicine
The Wolf Prize in Medicine 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, Physics and Arts. The Prize is probably the third most prestigious award...
and Arts
Wolf Prize in Arts
The Wolf Prize in Arts is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation, and has been awarded since 1981; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Physics, awarded since 1978...
. The Prize is often considered the most prestigious award in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
after the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
.
Laureates
| Year | Name | Nationality | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Chien-Shiung Wu Chien-Shiung Wu Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American physicist with expertise in the techniques of experimental physics and radioactivity. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project... |
, (Chinese American) |
for her explorations of the weak interaction, helping establish the precise form and the non-conservation of parity for this natural force. |
| 1979 | George Eugene Uhlenbeck George Eugene Uhlenbeck George Eugene Uhlenbeck was a Dutch-American theoretical physicist.-Background and education:George Uhlenbeck was the son of Eugenius and Anne Beeger Uhlenbeck... |
/ | for his discovery, jointly with the late S.A. Goudsmit, of the electron spin. |
| Giuseppe Occhialini Giuseppe Occhialini Giuseppe Paolo Stanislao "Beppo" Occhialini ForMemRS was an Italian physicist, who contributed to the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay in 1947, with César Lattes and Cecil Frank Powell . At the time of this discovery, they were all working at the H. H... |
for his contributions to the discoveries of electron pair production and of the charged pion. | ||
| 1980 | Michael E. Fisher Leo P. Kadanoff Kenneth G. Wilson Kenneth G. Wilson Kenneth Geddes Wilson is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner.As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was a Putnam Fellow. He earned his PhD from Caltech in 1961, studying under Murray Gell-Mann.... |
for pathbreaking developments culminating in the general theory of the critical behavior at transitions between the different thermodynamic phases of matter. | |
| 1981 | Freeman J. Dyson Gerard 't Hooft Victor F. Weisskopf |
/ ; ; / |
for their outstanding contributions to theoretical physics, especially in the development and application of the quantum theory of fields. |
| 1982 | Leon M. Lederman Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work with neutrinos. He is Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, USA... Martin Lewis Perl Martin Lewis Perl Martin Lewis Perl is an American physicist, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton.His parents were Jewish emigrants to the US from the Polish area of Russia.... |
|
for their experimental discovery of unexpected new particles establishing a third generation of quarks and leptons. |
| 1983/84 | Erwin Hahn Erwin Hahn Erwin L. Hahn is a U.S. physicist, best known for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance . In 1950 he discovered the spin echo.... |
for his discovery of nuclear spin echoes and for the phenomenon of self-induced transparency. | |
| Peter B. Hirsch | for his development of the utilization of the transmission electron microscope as a universal instrument to study the structure of crystalline matter. | ||
| Theodore H. Maiman | for his realization of the first operating laser, the pulsed three level ruby laser. | ||
| 1985 | Conyers Herring Conyers Herring Conyers Herring was an American physicist. He was Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University and the Wolf Prize in Physics recipient in 1984/5.-Academic career:... Philippe Nozieres Philippe Nozieres Philippe Nozières is a French physicist working at Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France.- Academic career :Nozières studied at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and conducted research at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. He has served as a professor at the University of Paris... |
|
for their major contributions to the fundamental theory of solids, especially of the behaviour of electrons in metals. |
| 1986 | 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. | |
| Albert J. Libchaber Albert J. Libchaber Albert J. Libchaber is a Detlev W. Bronk Professor at Rockefeller University. He won the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1986.-Education:... |
/ | for his brilliant experimental demonstration of the transition to turbulence and chaos in dynamical systems. | |
| 1987 | Herbert Friedman Herbert Friedman Herbert Friedman was an American pioneer in the application of sounding rockets to solar physics, aeronomy, and astronomy. He was also a statesman and public advocate for science... |
for pioneering investigations in solar X-rays. | |
| Bruno B. Rossi Riccardo Giacconi Riccardo Giacconi Riccardo Giacconi is an Italian/American Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy. He is currently a professor at the Johns Hopkins University.- Biography :... |
/ / |
for the discovery of extra-solar X-ray sources and the elucidation of their physical processes. | |
| 1988 | Roger Penrose Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College... Stephen W. Hawking |
|
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. |
| 1989 | No award | ||
| 1990 | Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.-Biography:... David J. Thouless David Thouless David James Thouless is a condensed matter physicist and Wolf Prize winner.Thouless earned his PhD at Cornell University under Hans Bethe. He was a professor of mathematical physics at Birmingham University in the United Kingdom before becoming a professor of physics at the University of... |
; / |
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. |
| 1991 | Maurice Goldhaber Maurice Goldhaber Maurice Goldhaber was an Austrian-born American physicist, who in 1957 established that neutrinos have negative helicity.-Early Life and Childhood:... Valentine L. Telegdi |
; / |
for their separate seminal contributions to nuclear and particle physics, particularly those concerning the weak interactions involving leptons. |
| 1992 | Joseph H. Taylor Jr. | for his discovery of an orbiting radio pulsar and its exploitation to verify the general theory of relativity to high precision. | |
| 1993 | Benoît Mandelbrot Benoît Mandelbrot Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child... |
/ | by recognizing the widespread occurrence of fractals and developing mathematical tools for describing them, he has changed our view of nature. |
| 1994/95 | Vitaly L. Ginzburg | for his contributions to the theory of superconductivity and to the theory of high-energy processes in astrophysics. | |
| Yoichiro Nambu Yoichiro Nambu is a Japanese-born American physicist, currently a professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded a one-half share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in... |
/ | 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. | |
| 1995/96 | No award | ||
| 1996/97 | John Archibald Wheeler John Archibald Wheeler John Archibald Wheeler was an American theoretical physicist who was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in explaining the basic principles behind nuclear fission... |
for his seminal contributions to black holes physics, to quantum gravity, and to the theories of nuclear scattering and nuclear fission. | |
| 1998 | Yakir Aharonov Yakir Aharonov Yakir Aharonov is an Israeli physicist specializing in quantum physics. He is a Professor of Theoretical Physics and the James J. Farley Professor of Natural Philosophy at Chapman University in California. He is also a distinguished professor in Perimeter Institute.He also serves as a professor... Michael V. Berry |
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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. |
| 1999 | Dan Shechtman Dan Shechtman Dan Shechtman is the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an Associate of the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science at Iowa State University. On April 8, 1982, while on sabbatical at the U.S... |
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. | |
| 2000 | Raymond Davis Jr. Raymond Davis Jr. Raymond Davis, Jr. was an American chemist, physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate.-Early life and education:... Masatoshi Koshiba Masatoshi Koshiba is a Japanese physicist. He jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002.He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1951 and received a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Rochester, New York, in 1955... |
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for their pioneering observations of astronomical phenomena by detection of neutrinos, thus creating the emerging field of neutrino astronomy. |
| 2001 | No award | ||
| 2002/03 | Bertrand I. Halperin Anthony J. Leggett |
; / |
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. |
| 2004 | Robert Brout Robert Brout Robert Brout was an American-Belgian theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions in elementary particle physics... François Englert François Englert François Englert is a Belgian theoretical physicist. He was awarded the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics , the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2004 and the High Energy and Particle Prize of the European Physical Society François Englert (born 6 November 1932) is a... Peter W. Higgs |
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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. |
| 2005 | Daniel Kleppner Daniel Kleppner Daniel Kleppner, born 1932, is the Lester Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Physics at MIT and co-director of the . He is the winner of the 2005 Wolf Prize in Physics , and the 2007 . Prof. Kleppner has also been awarded the National Medal of Science . Together with Robert J. Kolenkow, he authored a... |
for groundbreaking work in atomic physics of hydrogenic systems, including research on the hydrogen maser, Rydberg atoms and Bose-Einstein condensation. | |
| 2006/07 | Albert Fert Albert Fert Albert Fert is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks... Peter Grünberg Peter Grünberg Peter Andreas Grünberg is a German physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Albert Fert of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives.-Biography:... |
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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. |
| 2008 | No award | ||
| 2009 | No award | ||
| 2010 | John F. Clauser John Clauser John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality.... Alain Aspect Alain Aspect Alain Aspect is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement.... Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger is an Austrian quantum physicist. He is currently professor of physics at the University of Vienna, previously University of Innsbruck. He is also the director of the Vienna branch of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information IQOQI at the Austrian Academy of Sciences... |
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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 thereof, using entangled quantum states. |
| 2011 | Maximilian Haider Maximilian Haider Maximilian Haider is an Austrian physicist. He won the 2011 Wolf Prize in Physics, along with Harald Rose and Knut Urban, for his contributions to electron microscope.-External links:*... Harald Rose Knut Urban Knut Urban Knut W. Urban is a German physicist. He has been the Director of the Institute of Microstructure Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich since 1987.... |
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for their development of aberration-corrected electron microscopy, allowing the observation of individual atoms with picometer precision, thus revolutionizing materials science. |