Nobel Prize

For a second time, the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1993 was awarded to the discovery of a burnt-out star remnant known as a pulsar. Awarding the Prize to Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor not only rewarded their discovery of two pulsars dancing around each other but also acknowledged their discovery of a space laboratory…

As Ernst Ruska discovered, having an ingenious idea like the electron microscope can occur in the blink of an eye, but overcoming the finer details to create a successfully working instrument can take years. Two incredible circles closed for in December 1986, at the age of 80. The first was that Ruska was finally receiving…

The concept that matter is made up of tiny atoms has been proposed for millennia, but we rely on our five senses to provide the ultimate truth. The 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics rewarded two radical leaps in microscope technology that finally allowed us to witness life at the atomic level. The light microscope, invented…

Death of a star What happens to a star when it runs out of fuel and dies? In the 1920s, scientists assumed that when a star burns off all its energy supply its light fades, leaving behind the burnt-out and dense remains known as a white dwarf. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was the first to show how…

Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, 1/2 of the prize The interference you see on an analogue television screen as you try to tune in to channels might seem an unlikely form of time travel, but within this static hiss lies a glimpse of the first moments of the universe. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson’s…

The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish for their pioneering efforts to tune in to radio broadcasts from the stars. Their development and use of radio-based versions of telescopes has broadened our view of the universe by revealing information about stars in remarkable detail. Sir Martin Ryle…

“Why does the Sun shine?” is one of those questions asked by curious children to which adults struggle to provide a convincing answer. Hans Bethe received the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for revealing how the Sun behaves like a giant nuclear reactor to produce the vast amount of heat and light that supports life…

The protons and neutrons that make up every atomic nucleus behave not like the tiny ping-pong-ball like structures taught in school, but more like gyroscopes that spin about their axes in random directions, generating their own minute magnetic fields. Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell demonstrated how manipulating and analysing the movement of these subatomic spinning…

Lawrence Bragg might have been the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate, but being part of a father-and-son team meant it was years before he received true recognition for his seminal work in X-ray crystallography. Receiving a Nobel Prize at the tender age of 25 can be a mixed blessing, especially if your fellow recipient happens…

When Max von Laue showed that X-rays are diffracted in crystals and form characteristic patterns on photographic film, he proved in a single experiment that X-rays are wave-like in nature, and that crystals have a lattice-like structure. What wasn’t clear was whether the structure of the crystal and the wavelength of X-rays had any influence…