Please verify before quoting. This list is written from memory and may contain errors, especially for the most recent years. The 2026 prize had not been announced at the time of writing, and the 2025 entry should be double-checked. Always confirm names and citations on the official site: nobelprize.org.
2011 · An accelerating universe
Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess — for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant type Ia supernovae. Their work implies that most of the universe is made of something we call dark energy.
2012 · Measuring single quantum systems
Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland — for experimental methods that allow individual quantum systems (single photons and trapped ions) to be measured and manipulated without destroying them. These techniques underpin today's atomic clocks and quantum computers.
2013 · The Higgs mechanism
François Englert and Peter W. Higgs — for the theory explaining how fundamental particles acquire mass, confirmed in 2012 when ATLAS and CMS at CERN's Large Hadron Collider found the predicted particle.
2014 · Blue LEDs
Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura — for inventing efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which made bright, energy-saving white light possible. Connects directly to your Semiconductor Electronics chapter.
2015 · Neutrinos have mass
Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald — for discovering neutrino oscillations, which show that neutrinos change type and therefore must have mass — something the Standard Model had not assumed.
2016 · Topological phases of matter
David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz — for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter, using the mathematics of shape to explain exotic states of matter.
2017 · Gravitational waves
Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne — for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the first direct observation of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime from merging black holes.
2018 · Tools made of light
Arthur Ashkin for optical tweezers, which grip particles and living cells with laser beams, and Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for chirped pulse amplification, the technique behind today's ultra-intense lasers and corrective eye surgery.
2019 · Our place in the cosmos
James Peebles for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology, and Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star.
2020 · Black holes
Roger Penrose for showing that black hole formation is a robust prediction of general relativity, and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.
2021 · Complex systems and climate
Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for physical modelling of Earth's climate and reliably predicting global warming, and Giorgio Parisi for discovering the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems.
2022 · Entanglement proven
Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger — for experiments with entangled photons that violated Bell inequalities and pioneered quantum information science.
2023 · Attosecond pulses
Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier — for experimental methods generating attosecond light pulses, fast enough to photograph the motion of electrons inside atoms.
2024 · Machine learning with physics
John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton — for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks, built on ideas borrowed from statistical physics.
2025 · Quantum behaviour in electrical circuits
John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis are reported to have been honoured for the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit — work that underlies superconducting qubits. Please verify this entry against the official announcement.
2026 · Not yet announced
The Nobel Prize in Physics is announced each October. At the time of writing I do not have reliable information about the 2026 laureates, so this space is intentionally left open. Check nobelprize.org for the announcement and update this page.
What the pattern tells a student
Look at the list as a whole and three themes appear: quantum technology (2012, 2022, 2023, 2025), cosmology and gravity (2011, 2017, 2019, 2020), and physics serving other fields (2014, 2018, 2021, 2024).
Notice also how long the wait can be. Higgs proposed his mechanism in 1964 and received the prize in 2013 — the Nobel rewards confirmed evidence, not clever ideas alone. That is the scientific method made institutional.
Many of these discoveries sit in your syllabus already.