List of Nobel Prize laureates in physics. Nobel Prize Laureates in Physics

Today, October 2, 2018, the ceremony to announce the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics took place in Stockholm. The prize was awarded “for breakthrough discoveries in the field of laser physics.” The wording notes that half the prize goes to Arthur Ashkin for “optical tweezers and their use in biological systems” and the other half to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for their method of generating high-intensity ultrashort optical impulses."

BREAKING NEWS⁰The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the #NobelPrize in Physics 2018 “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics” with one half to Arthur Ashkin and the other half jointly to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland. pic.twitter.com/PK08SnUslK

October 2, 2018

Arthur Ashkin invented optical tweezers that can capture and move individual atoms, viruses and living cells without damaging them. It does this by focusing laser radiation and using gradient forces that draw particles into an area with a higher intensity of the electromagnetic field. For the first time, Ashkin’s group managed to capture a living cell in this way in 1987. Currently, this method is widely used to study viruses, bacteria, human tissue cells, as well as in the manipulation of individual atoms (to create nano-sized systems).

Gerard Moore and Donna Strickland first succeeded in creating a source of ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses without destroying the laser working environment in 1985. Before their research, significant amplification of short-pulse lasers was impossible: a single pulse through the amplifier led to the destruction of the system due to too much intensity.

The pulse generation method developed by Moore and Strickland is now called chirped pulse amplification: the shorter the laser pulse, the wider its spectrum, and all spectral components propagate together. However, by using a pair of prisms (or diffraction gratings), the spectral components of the pulse can be delayed relative to each other before entering the amplifier and thereby reducing the intensity of the radiation at each instant. This chirped pulse is then amplified by an optical system and then compressed again into a short pulse using an inverse dispersion optical system (usually diffraction gratings).

Ultra-sharp laser beams make it possible to cut or drill holes in various materials extremely precisely – even in living matter. Millions of eye operations are performed every year with the sharpest of laser beams. #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/MiYb4i8AHw

The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018

Amplification of chirped pulses has made it possible to create efficient femtosecond lasers of noticeable power. They are capable of delivering powerful pulses lasting quadrillionths of a second. On their basis, today a number of promising systems have been created both in electronics and in laboratory installations, important for a number of areas of physics. At the same time, they constantly find new, often unexpected areas of practical application.

For example, the method of femtosecond laser vision correction (SMall Incision Lenticula Extraction) allows you to remove part of the cornea of ​​a person’s eye and thereby correct myopia. Although the laser correction approach itself was proposed back in the 1960s, before the advent of femtosecond lasers, the power and shortness of the pulses were not enough to effectively and safely work with the eye: long pulses overheated the eye tissue and damaged them, and short pulses were too weak to obtain the desired cut in the eye. cornea. Today, millions of people around the world have undergone surgery using similar lasers.

In addition, femtosecond lasers, due to their short pulse duration, have made it possible to create devices that monitor and control ultrafast processes both in solid state physics and in optical systems. This is extremely important, because before obtaining a means of recording processes occurring at such speeds, it was almost impossible to study the behavior of a number of systems, on the basis of which, it is assumed, it will be possible to create promising electronics of the future.

Alexey Shcherbakov, senior researcher at the Laboratory of Nanoptics and Plasmonics at MIPT, commented to Attic: “The Nobel Prize for Gerard Mourou for his contribution to the development of femtosecond lasers has been a long time coming, ten years or maybe more. The role of related work is truly fundamental, and lasers of this kind are increasingly being used around the world. Today it is difficult to even list all the areas where they are used. True, I find it difficult to say what caused the decision of the Nobel Committee to combine both Mura and Ashkin, whose developments are not directly related, in one prize. This is indeed not the most obvious decision on the part of the committee. Maybe they decided that it was impossible to give the prize only to Moore or only to Ashkin, but if half the prize was given for one direction, and the other half for the other, then it would seem quite justified.”.

The Nobel Prize in Physics, the highest award for scientific achievement in the relevant science, is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. It was established according to the will of the Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel. The prize can be awarded to a maximum of three scientists at a time. The monetary reward can be distributed equally between them or divided into half and two quarters. In 2017, the cash bonus was increased by one-eighth - from eight to nine million crowns (approximately $1.12 million).

Each laureate receives a medal, diploma and monetary reward. Medals and cash prizes will traditionally be presented to the laureates at an annual ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 1901 to Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen for his discovery and study of the properties of rays, which were later named after him. Interestingly, the scientist accepted the prize, but refused to come to the presentation ceremony, saying that he was very busy. Therefore, the reward was sent to him by mail. When the German government during the First World War asked the population to help the state with money and valuables, Roentgen gave all his savings, including the Nobel Prize.

Last year, 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne. These three physicists made crucial contributions to the LIGO detector that detected gravitational waves. Now, with their help, it has become possible to track mergers of neutron stars and black holes invisible to telescopes.

Interestingly, starting next year the situation with the issuance of Nobel Prizes may change significantly. The Nobel Committee will recommend that award decision-makers select candidates based on gender, to include more women, and by ethnicity, to increase the number of non-Western people). However, this probably will not affect physics - so far only two laureates of this prize have been women. And just this year, Donna Strickland became third.

With the wording " for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter" Behind this somewhat vague and incomprehensible phrase to the general public lies a whole world of non-trivial and surprising effects even for physicists themselves, in the theoretical discovery of which the laureates played a key role in the 1970s and 1980s. They, of course, were not the only ones who realized the importance of topology in physics at that time. Thus, the Soviet physicist Vadim Berezinsky, a year before Kosterlitz and Thouless, took, in fact, the first important step towards topological phase transitions. There are many other names that could be put next to Haldane's name. But be that as it may, all three laureates are certainly iconic figures in this section of physics.

A Lyrical Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics

Explaining in accessible words the essence and importance of the work for which the physics Nobel 2016 was awarded is not an easy task. Not only are the phenomena themselves complex and, in addition, quantum, but they are also diverse. The prize was awarded not for one specific discovery, but for a whole list of pioneering works that in the 1970–1980s stimulated the development of a new direction in condensed matter physics. In this news I will try to achieve a more modest goal: to explain with a couple of examples essence what a topological phase transition is, and convey the feeling that this is a truly beautiful and important physical effect. The story will be about only one half of the award, the one in which Kosterlitz and Thouless showed themselves. Haldane's work is equally fascinating, but it is even less visual and would require a very long story to explain.

Let's start with a quick introduction to the most phenomenal section of physics - condensed matter physics.

Condensed matter is, in everyday language, when many particles of the same type come together and strongly influence each other. Almost every word here is key. The particles themselves and the law of interaction between them must be of the same type. You can take several different atoms, please, but the main thing is that this fixed set is repeated again and again. There should be a lot of particles; a dozen or two is not yet a condensed medium. And, finally, they must strongly influence each other: push, pull, interfere with each other, maybe exchange something with each other. A rarefied gas is not considered a condensed medium.

The main revelation of condensed matter physics: with such very simple “rules of the game” it revealed an endless wealth of phenomena and effects. Such a variety of phenomena arises not at all because of the variegated composition - the particles are of the same type - but spontaneously, dynamically, as a result collective effects. In fact, since the interaction is strong, there is no point in looking at the movement of each individual atom or electron, because it immediately affects the behavior of all nearest neighbors, and perhaps even distant particles. When you read a book, it “speaks” to you not with a scattering of individual letters, but with a set of words connected to each other; it conveys a thought to you in the form of a “collective effect” of letters. Likewise, condensed matter “speaks” in the language of synchronous collective movements, and not at all of individual particles. And it turns out there is a huge variety of these collective movements.

The current Nobel Prize recognizes the work of theorists to decipher another “language” that condensed matter can “speak” - the language topologically nontrivial excitations(what it is is just below). Quite a few specific physical systems in which such excitations arise have already been found, and the laureates have had a hand in many of them. But the most significant thing here is not specific examples, but the very fact that this also happens in nature.

Many topological phenomena in condensed matter were first invented by theorists and seemed to be just mathematical pranks not relevant to our world. But then experimenters discovered real environments in which these phenomena were observed - and the mathematical prank suddenly gave birth to a new class of materials with exotic properties. The experimental side of this branch of physics is now on the rise, and this rapid development will continue in the future, promising us new materials with programmed properties and devices based on them.

Topological excitations

First, let's clarify the word “topological.” Don't be alarmed that the explanation will sound like pure mathematics; the connection with physics will emerge as we go along.

There is such a branch of mathematics - geometry, the science of figures. If the shape of a figure is smoothly deformed, then, from the point of view of ordinary geometry, the figure itself changes. But figures have common characteristics that, with smooth deformation, without tears or gluing, remain unchanged. This is the topological characteristic of the figure. The most famous example of a topological characteristic is the number of holes in a three-dimensional body. A tea mug and a donut are topologically equivalent, they both have exactly one hole, and therefore one shape can be transformed into another by smooth deformation. A mug and a glass are topologically different because the glass has no holes. To consolidate the material, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the excellent topological classification of women's swimsuits.

So, the conclusion: everything that can be reduced to each other by smooth deformation is considered topologically equivalent. Two figures that cannot be transformed into each other by any smooth changes are considered topologically different.

The second word to explain is “excitement.” In condensed matter physics, excitation is any collective deviation from a "dead" stationary state, that is, from the state with the lowest energy. For example, when a crystal was hit, a sound wave ran through it - this is the vibrational excitation of the crystal lattice. Excitations do not have to be forced; they can arise spontaneously due to non-zero temperature. The usual thermal vibration of a crystal lattice is, in fact, a lot of vibrational excitations (phonons) with different wavelengths superimposed on each other. When the phonon concentration is high, a phase transition occurs and the crystal melts. In general, as soon as we understand in terms of what excitations a given condensed medium should be described, we will have the key to its thermodynamic and other properties.

Now let's connect two words. A sound wave is an example topologically trivial excitement. This sounds clever, but in its physical essence it simply means that the sound can be made as quiet as desired, even to the point of disappearing completely. A loud sound means strong atomic vibrations, a quiet sound means weak vibrations. The amplitude of vibrations can be smoothly reduced to zero (more precisely, to the quantum limit, but this is unimportant here), and it will still be a sound excitation, a phonon. Pay attention to the key mathematical fact: there is an operation to smoothly change the oscillations to zero - it is simply a decrease in amplitude. This is precisely what means that the phonon is a topologically trivial perturbation.

And now the richness of condensed matter is turned on. In some systems there are excitations that cannot be smoothly reduced to zero. It's not physically impossible, but fundamentally - the form doesn't allow it. There is simply no such everywhere smooth operation that transfers a system with excitation to a system with the lowest energy. The excitation in its form is topologically different from the same phonons.

See how it turns out. Let's consider a simple system (it's called the XY-model) - an ordinary square lattice, at the nodes of which there are particles with their own spin, which can be oriented in any way in this plane. We will depict the backs with arrows; The orientation of the arrow is arbitrary, but the length is fixed. We will also assume that the spins of neighboring particles interact with each other in such a way that the most energetically favorable configuration is when all spins at all nodes point in the same direction, as in a ferromagnet. This configuration is shown in Fig. 2, left. Spin waves can run along it - small wave-like deviations of spins from strict ordering (Fig. 2, right). But these are all ordinary, topologically trivial excitations.

Now look at Fig. 3. Shown here are two disturbances of unusual shape: a vortex and an antivortex. Mentally select a point in the picture and follow a circular path counterclockwise around the center, paying attention to what happens to the arrows. You will see that the arrow of the vortex turns in the same direction, counterclockwise, and that of the antivortex - in the opposite direction, clockwise. Now do the same in the ground state of the system (the arrow is generally motionless) and in the state with a spin wave (where the arrow oscillates slightly around the average value). You can also imagine deformed versions of these pictures, say a spin wave in a load towards a vortex: there the arrow will also make a full revolution, wobbling slightly.

After these exercises, it becomes clear that all possible excitations are divided into fundamentally different classes: whether the arrow makes a full revolution when going around the center or not, and if it does, then in which direction. These situations have different topologies. No amount of smooth changes can turn a vortex into an ordinary wave: if you turn the arrows, then abruptly, across the entire lattice at once and at a large angle at once. The vortex, as well as the anti-vortex, topologically protected: they, unlike a sound wave, cannot simply dissolve.

Last important point. A vortex is topologically different from a simple wave and from an antivortex only if the arrows lie strictly in the plane of the figure. If we are allowed to bring them into the third dimension, then the vortex can be smoothly eliminated. The topological classification of excitations radically depends on the dimension of the system!

Topological phase transitions

These purely geometric considerations have a very tangible physical consequence. The energy of an ordinary vibration, the same phonon, can be arbitrarily small. Therefore, at any temperature, no matter how low, these oscillations arise spontaneously and affect the thermodynamic properties of the medium. The energy of a topologically protected excitation, a vortex, cannot be below a certain limit. Therefore, at low temperatures, individual vortices do not arise, and therefore do not affect the thermodynamic properties of the system - at least, this was thought until the early 1970s.

Meanwhile, in the 1960s, through the efforts of many theorists, the problem with understanding what was happening in the XY model from a physical point of view was revealed. In the usual three-dimensional case, everything is simple and intuitive. At low temperatures the system looks ordered, as in Fig. 2. If you take two arbitrary lattice nodes, even very distant ones, then the spins in them will slightly oscillate around the same direction. This is, relatively speaking, a spin crystal. At high temperatures, spins “melt”: two distant lattice sites are no longer correlated with each other. There is a clear phase transition temperature between the two states. If you set the temperature exactly to this value, then the system will be in a special critical state, when the correlations still exist, but gradually, in a power-law manner, decrease with distance.

In a two-dimensional lattice at high temperatures there is also a disordered state. But at low temperatures everything looked very, very strange. A strict theorem was proven (see Mermin-Wagner theorem) that there is no crystalline order in the two-dimensional version. Careful calculations showed that it is not that it is not there at all, it simply decreases with distance according to a power law - exactly like in a critical state. But if in the three-dimensional case the critical state was only at one temperature, then here the critical state occupies the entire low-temperature region. It turns out that in the two-dimensional case some other excitations come into play that do not exist in the three-dimensional version (Fig. 4)!

The Nobel Committee's accompanying materials describe several examples of topological phenomena in various quantum systems, as well as recent experimental work to realize them and prospects for the future. This story ends with a quote from Haldane's 1988 article. In it, as if making excuses, he says: “ Although the specific model presented here is unlikely to be physically realizable, nevertheless...". 25 years later magazine Nature publishes , which reports an experimental implementation of Haldane's model. Perhaps topologically nontrivial phenomena in condensed matter are one of the most striking confirmations of the unspoken motto of condensed matter physics: in a suitable system we will embody any self-consistent theoretical idea, no matter how exotic it may seem.

Our entire understanding of the processes occurring in the Universe, ideas about its structure, were formed on the basis of the study of electromagnetic radiation, in other words, photons of all possible energies reaching our devices from the depths of space. But photon observations have their limitations: electromagnetic waves of even the highest energies do not reach us from too distant areas of space.

There are other forms of radiation - neutrino streams and gravitational waves. They can tell you about things that instruments that record electromagnetic waves will never see. In order to “see” neutrinos and gravitational waves, fundamentally new instruments are needed. Three American physicists, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barrish, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this year for the creation of a gravitational wave detector and experimental proof of their existence.

From left to right: Rainer Weiss, Barry Barrish and Kip Thorne.

The existence of gravitational waves is provided for by the general theory of relativity and was predicted by Einstein back in 1915. They arise when very massive objects collide with each other and generate disturbances in space-time, diverging at the speed of light in all directions from the point of origin.

Even if the event that generated the wave is huge - for example, two black holes colliding - the effect that the wave has on space-time is extremely small, so it is difficult to register it, which requires very sensitive instruments. Einstein himself believed that a gravitational wave, passing through matter, affects it so little that it cannot be observed. Indeed, the actual effect that a wave has on matter is quite difficult to capture, but indirect effects can be recorded. This is exactly what American astrophysicists Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse did in 1974, measuring the radiation of the double pulsar star PSR 1913+16 and proving that the deviation of its pulsation period from the calculated one is explained by the loss of energy carried away by a gravitational wave. For this they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993.

On September 14, 2015, LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, directly detected a gravitational wave for the first time. By the time the wave reached the Earth, it was very weak, but even this weak signal meant a revolution in physics. To make this possible, it took the work of thousands of scientists from twenty countries who built LIGO.

It took several months to verify the results of the fifteenth year, so they were made public only in February 2016. In addition to the main discovery - confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves - there were several more hidden in the results: the first evidence of the existence of black holes of average mass (20−60 solar) and the first evidence that they can merge.

It took the gravitational wave more than a billion years to reach Earth. Far, far away, beyond our galaxy, two black holes crashed into each other, 1.3 billion years passed - and LIGO told us about this event.

The energy of a gravitational wave is enormous, but the amplitude is incredibly small. Feeling it is like measuring the distance to a distant star with an accuracy of tenths of a millimeter. LIGO is capable of this. Weiss developed the concept: back in the 70s, he calculated what terrestrial phenomena could distort the results of observations and how to get rid of them. LIGO consists of two observatories, the distance between which is 3002 kilometers. A gravitational wave travels this distance in 7 milliseconds, so two interferometers refine each other’s readings as the wave passes.

The two LIGO observatories, in Livingston (Louisiana) and Hanford (Washington State), are located 3002 km apart.

Each observatory has two four-kilometer arms emanating from the same point at right angles to each other. Inside they have an almost perfect vacuum. At the beginning and end of each arm there is a complex system of mirrors. Passing through our planet, a gravitational wave slightly compresses the space where one arm is laid, and stretches the second (without a wave, the length of the arms is strictly the same). A laser beam is fired from the crosshairs of the shoulders, split in two and reflected on the mirrors; Having passed their distance, the rays meet at the crosshairs. If this happens simultaneously, then space-time is calm. And if one of the rays took longer to pass through the shoulder than the other, it means that the gravitational wave lengthened its path and shortened the path of the second ray.

Operation diagram of the LIGO observatory.

LIGO was developed by Weiss (and, of course, his colleagues), Kip Thorne - the world's leading expert in the theory of relativity - performed the theoretical calculations, Barry Barish joined the LIGO team in 1994 and turned a small - just 40 people - group of enthusiasts into a huge international collaboration LIGO/VIRGO, thanks to the well-coordinated work of its participants, a fundamental experiment was made possible, carried out twenty years later.

Work on gravitational wave detectors continues. The first recorded wave was followed by a second, third and fourth; the latter was “caught” not only by LIGO detectors, but also by the recently launched European VIRGO. The fourth gravitational wave, unlike the previous three, was born not in absolute darkness (as a result of the merger of black holes), but with complete illumination - during the explosion of a neutron star; Space and ground-based telescopes also detected an optical source of radiation in the area from which the gravitational wave came.

Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the winners of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize will be awarded to Rainer Weiss (half the prize), Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, with the wording "for their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." The official presentation of prizes and medals will take place in December, after traditional lectures. The announcement of the winner was broadcast live on the Nobel Committee website.

Weiss, Thorne and Barish have been considered among the most likely candidates for the Nobel Prize in Physics since 2016, when the LIGO and VIRGO collaboration detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes.

Rainer Weiss played a key role in the development of the detector, a huge interferometer with extremely low noise levels. The physicist began related work back in the 1970s, creating small prototypes of systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A few years later, prototypes of interferometers were created at Caltech - under the leadership of Kip Thorne. Later, physicists joined forces.

LIGO gravitational observatory diagram

Barry Barish turned a small collaboration between MIT and Caltech into a huge international project - LIGO. The scientist led the development of the project and the creation of detectors since the mid-1990s.

LIGO consists of two gravitational observatories located 3000 kilometers apart. Each of them is an L-shaped Michelson interferometer. It consists of two 4-kilometer evacuated optical arms. The laser beam is split into two components, which pass through the pipes, are reflected from their ends and are combined again. If the length of the arm has changed, the nature of the interference between the beams changes, which is recorded by detectors. The large distance between the observatories allows us to see the difference in the arrival time of gravitational waves - from the assumption that the latter propagate at the speed of light, the difference in arrival time reaches 10 milliseconds.

Two LIGO detectors

You can read more about gravitational-wave astronomy and its future in our material “”.

In 2017, the Nobel Prize was increased by one million Swedish kronor - an immediate increase of 12.5 percent. Now it is 9 million crowns or 64 million rubles.

The 2016 Nobel Prize winners in physics were theorists Duncan Haldane, David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz. These phenomena include, for example, the integer Hall effect: a thin layer of a substance changes its resistance stepwise with increasing induction of the magnetic field applied to it. In addition, the theory helps describe superconductivity, superfluidity and magnetic ordering in thin layers of materials. It is interesting that the foundation of the theory was laid by the Soviet physicist Vadim Berezinsky, but, alas, he did not live to see the award. You can read more about this in our material “”.

Vladimir Korolev

, Nobel Peace Prize and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen "in recognition of his extraordinary services to science, expressed in the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named in his honor." This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and is widely considered the most prestigious award a physicist can receive. It is awarded in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

Purpose and selection

No more than three laureates can be selected for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Compared to some other Nobel Prizes, nomination and selection for the Prize in Physics is a long and rigorous process. That is why the prize became more and more prestigious over the years and eventually became the most important physics prize in the world.

Nobel laureates are selected by the Nobel Committee in Physics, which consists of five members elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. At the first stage, several thousand people propose candidates. These names are studied and discussed by experts before the final selection.

Forms are sent to approximately three thousand people inviting them to submit their nominations. The names of the nominees are not publicly announced for fifty years, nor are they communicated to the nominees. Lists of nominees and their nominators are kept sealed for fifty years. However, in practice, some candidates become known earlier.

Applications are reviewed by a committee, and a list of approximately two hundred preliminary candidates is forwarded to selected experts in these fields. They trim the list down to about fifteen names. The committee submits a report with recommendations to the relevant institutions. While posthumous nominations are not permitted, the award can be received if the person died within a few months between the award committee's decision (usually in October) and the ceremony in December. Until 1974, posthumous awards were permitted if the recipient died after they were made.

The rules for the Nobel Prize in Physics require that the significance of an achievement be "tested by time." In practice, this means that the gap between discovery and prize is usually about 20 years, but can be much longer. For example, half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 was awarded to S. Chandrasekhar for his work on the structure and evolution of stars, which was done in 1930. The disadvantage of this approach is that not all scientists live long enough for their work to be recognized. For some important scientific discoveries, this prize was never awarded because the discoverers died by the time the impact of their work was appreciated.

Awards

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics receives a gold medal, a diploma stating the award and a sum of money. The monetary amount depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation in the current year. If the prize is awarded to more than one laureate, the money is divided equally between them; in the case of three laureates, the money can also be divided into half and two quarters.

Medals

Nobel Prize medals minted Myntverket in Sweden and the Norwegian Mint since 1902, are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation. Each medal has an image of Alfred Nobel's left profile on the obverse. Nobel Prize medals in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature have the same obverse showing an image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death (1833-1896). Nobel's portrait also appears on the obverse of the Nobel Peace Prize medal and the Economics Prize medal, but with a slightly different design. The image on the reverse side of the medal varies depending on the awarding institution. The reverse side of the Nobel Prize medal for chemistry and physics has the same design.

Diplomas

Nobel laureates receive a diploma from the hands of the King of Sweden. Each diploma has a unique design developed by the awarding institution for the recipient. The diploma contains an image and text that contains the recipient's name and usually a quote about why they received the award.

Premium

Laureates are also given a sum of money when they receive the Nobel Prize in the form of a document confirming the amount of the award; in 2009 the cash bonus was SEK 10 million (USD 1.4 million). The amounts may vary depending on how much money the Nobel Foundation may award this year. If there are two winners in a category, the grant is divided equally among the recipients. If there are three recipients, the award committee has the option of dividing the grant into equal parts or awarding half the amount to one recipient and one quarter each to the other two.

Ceremony

The committee and institutions serving as the selection committee for the award typically announce the names of the recipients in October. The prize is then awarded at an official ceremony held annually at Stockholm City Hall on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The laureates receive a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the cash prize.

Laureates

Notes

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2. "The Nobel Prize Selection Process", Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed November 5, 2007 (Flowchart).
3. FAQ nobelprize.org
4. Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott’s Contribution to Dynamic Macroeconomics: The Time Consistency of Economic Policy and the Driving Forces Behind Business Cycles (undefined) (PDF). Official website of the Nobel Prize (October 11, 2004). Retrieved December 17, 2012. Archived December 28, 2012.
5. Gingras, Yves. Wallace, Matthew L. Why it has become more difficult to predict Nobel Prize winners: A bibliometric analysis of nominees and winners of the chemistry and physics prizes (1901–2007) // Scientometrics. - 2009. - No. 2. - P. 401. - DOI:10.1007/s11192-009-0035-9.
6. A noble prize (English) // Nature Chemistry: journal. - DOI:10.1038/nchem.372. - Bibcode: 2009NatCh...1..509..
7. Tom Rivers. 2009 Nobel Laureates Receive Their Honors | Europe| English (undefined) . .voanews.com (December 10, 2009). Retrieved January 15, 2010. Archived December 14, 2012.
8. The Nobel Prize Amounts (undefined) . Nobelprize.org. Retrieved January 15, 2010. Archived July 3, 2006.
9. "Nobel Prize - Prizes" (2007), in Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed 15 January 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online:
10. Medalj – ett traditionellt hantverk(Swedish). Myntverket. Retrieved December 15, 2007. Archived December 18, 2007.
11. "The Nobel Prize for Peace" Archived September 16, 2009 on the Wayback Machine, "Linus Pauling: Awards, Honors, and Medals", Linus Pauling and The Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History, the Valley Library, Oregon State University. Retrieved December 7, 2007.