Nobel Prize in Physics 1925

James Franck

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Prize share: 1/2

Gustav Ludwig Hertz

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Prize share: 1/2

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1925 was awarded jointly to James Franck and Gustav Ludwig Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom"
James Franck and Gustav Hertz received their Nobel Prize one year later, in 1926. During the selection process in 1925, the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of the year’s nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied. James Franck and Gustav Hertz therefore received their Nobel Prize for 1925 one year later, in 1926.

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MLA style: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1925. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2025. Fri. 18 Apr 2025. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1925/summary/>

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