List of Nobel laureates in Physics by age
This is a list of Nobel laureates in Physics by age.
To allow for the differing amount of leap years within the life of each laureate, two measures of longevity are given. The first is the number of days lived by the laureate. Following that comes the number of whole years the laureate lived, and days past their last birthday. Where the person in question is still living, the longevity is calculated up to .
Overview
The median age for a person winning the Nobel Prize in Physics is 54 years and 5 months, which is how old Pavel Cherenkov was when he won the 1958 prize. The youngest person to win the Nobel Prize in Physics was William L. Bragg, who won the 1915 prize at the age of 25 years, 254 days. The oldest person to win the Nobel Prize in Physics was Raymond Davis, Jr., who won the 2002 prize at the age of 88 years, 57 days.
The Physics laureate who lived the longest after receiving the prize was Louis de Broglie. de Broglie died 57 years, 99 days after he received his prize, at the age of 94 years, 216 days. de Broglie's post-Nobel lifespan is also the longest of any Nobel laureate in any field. The next in line to tie this are Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, who received the prize in 1957. Should Lee and Yang live to 19 March 2015, they would tie de Broglie's record. Lee's age on that date would be . Yang's age on that date would be .
The oldest living Physics laureate is Charles H. Townes (born 28 July 1915), at the age of . At only 30 days younger than Townes, the second oldest living Physics laureate is Norman F. Ramsey (born 27 August 1915), at the age of . The youngest living Physics laureate is Eric A. Cornell (born 19 December 1961), at the age of .
The longest lived Physics laureate was Hans Bethe, who lived to the age of 98 years, 247 days. If oldest living Physics laureate Charles H. Townes lives to 1 April 2014, he will tie that record. The shortest lived Physics laureate was Pierre Curie, who died at the age of 46 years, 339 days when he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle. The second shortest lived Physics laureate was Enrico Fermi, who died of stomach cancer at the age of 53 years, 60 days.
List of Nobel laureates in Physics by age
# |
Laureate |
Date of birth |
Date of |
Age upon |
Days lived |
Date of death |
Lifespan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Wilhelm Röntgen |
days |
days () |
||||
2 |
Hendrik Lorentz |
days |
days () |
||||
3 |
Pieter Zeeman |
days |
days () |
||||
4 |
Henri Becquerel |
days |
days () |
||||
5 |
Marie Curie |
days |
days () |
||||
6 |
Pierre Curie |
days |
days () |
||||
7 |
John Strutt |
days |
days () |
||||
8 |
Philipp Lenard |
days |
days () |
||||
9 |
J. J. Thomson |
days |
days () |
||||
10 |
Albert A. Michelson |
days |
days () |
||||
11 |
Gabriel Lippmann |
days |
days () |
||||
12 |
Karl F. Braun |
days |
days () |
||||
13 |
Guglielmo Marconi |
days |
days () |
||||
14 |
Johannes van der Waals |
days |
days () |
||||
15 |
Wilhelm Wien |
days |
days () |
||||
16 |
Gustaf Dalén |
days |
days () |
||||
17 |
Heike K. Onnes |
days |
days () |
||||
18 |
Max von Laue |
days |
days () |
||||
19 |
William H. Bragg |
days |
days () |
||||
20 |
William L. Bragg |
days |
days () |
||||
21 |
Charles G. Barkla |
days |
days () |
||||
22 |
Max Planck |
days |
days () |
||||
23 |
Johannes Stark |
days |
days () |
||||
24 |
Charles É. Guillaume |
days |
days () |
||||
25 |
Albert Einstein |
days |
days () |
||||
26 |
Niels Bohr |
days |
days () |
||||
27 |
Robert A. Millikan |
days |
days () |
||||
28 |
Manne Siegbahn |
days |
days () |
||||
29 |
James Franck |
days |
days () |
||||
30 |
Gustav L. Hertz |
days |
days () |
||||
31 |
Jean B. Perrin |
days |
days () |
||||
32 |
Arthur Compton |
days |
days () |
||||
33 |
Charles T. R. Wilson |
days |
days () |
||||
34 |
Owen W. Richardson |
days |
days () |
||||
35 |
Louis de Broglie |
days |
days () |
||||
36 |
C. V. Raman |
days |
days () |
||||
37 |
Werner Heisenberg |
days |
days () |
||||
38 |
Paul Dirac |
days |
days () |
||||
39 |
Erwin Schrödinger |
days |
days () |
||||
40 |
James Chadwick |
days |
days () |
||||
41 |
Carl D. Anderson |
days |
days () |
||||
42 |
Victor F. Hess |
days |
days () |
||||
43 |
Clinton Davisson |
days |
days () |
||||
44 |
George P. Thomson |
days |
days () |
||||
45 |
Enrico Fermi |
days |
days () |
||||
46 |
Ernest Lawrence |
days |
days () |
||||
47 |
Otto Stern |
days |
days () |
||||
48 |
Isidor I. Rabi |
days |
days () |
||||
49 |
Wolfgang Pauli |
days |
days () |
||||
50 |
Percy W. Bridgman |
days |
days () |
||||
51 |
Edward V. Appleton |
days |
days () |
||||
52 |
Patrick Blackett |
days |
days () |
||||
53 |
Hideki Yukawa |
days |
days () |
||||
54 |
Cecil F. Powell |
days |
days () |
||||
55 |
John Cockroft |
days |
days () |
||||
56 |
Ernest Walton |
days |
days () |
||||
57 |
Felix Bloch |
days |
days () |
||||
58 |
Edward M. Purcell |
days |
days () |
||||
59 |
Frits Zernike |
days |
days () |
||||
60 |
Max Born |
days |
days () |
||||
61 |
Walther Bothe |
days |
days () |
||||
62 |
Polykarp Kusch |
days |
days () |
||||
63 |
Willis Lamb |
days |
days () |
||||
64 |
John Bardeen |
days |
days () |
||||
65 |
Walter H. Brattain |
days |
days () |
||||
66 |
William Shockley |
days |
days () |
||||
67 |
Tsung-Dao Lee |
days |
days () |
||||
68 |
Chen-Ning Yang |
days |
days () |
||||
69 |
Pavel Cherenkov |
days |
days () |
||||
70 |
Ilya Frank |
days |
days () |
||||
71 |
Igor Tamm |
days |
days () |
||||
72 |
Owen Chamberlain |
days |
days () |
||||
73 |
Emilio G. Segrè |
days |
days () |
||||
74 |
Donald A. Glaser |
days |
days () |
||||
75 |
Robert Hofstadter |
days |
days () |
||||
76 |
Rudolf Mössbauer |
days |
days () |
||||
77 |
Lev Landau |
days |
days () |
||||
78 |
Maria Goeppert-Mayer |
days |
days () |
||||
79 |
J. Hans D. Jensen |
days |
days () |
||||
80 |
Eugene Wigner |
days |
days () |
||||
81 |
Nikolay Basov |
days |
days () |
||||
82 |
Alexander Prokhorov |
days |
days () |
||||
83 |
Charles H. Townes |
days |
days () |
||||
84 |
Richard Feynman |
days |
days () |
||||
85 |
Julian Schwinger |
days |
days () |
||||
86 |
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga |
days |
days () |
||||
87 |
Alfred Kastler |
days |
days () |
||||
88 |
Hans Bethe |
days |
days () |
||||
89 |
Luis W. Alvarez |
days |
days () |
||||
90 |
Murray Gell-Mann |
days |
days () |
||||
91 |
Hannes Alfvén |
days |
days () |
||||
92 |
Louis Néel |
days |
days () |
||||
93 |
Dennis Gabor |
days |
days () |
||||
94 |
John Bardeen |
days |
days () |
||||
95 |
Leon Cooper |
days |
days () |
||||
96 |
John R. Schrieffer |
days |
days () |
||||
97 |
Leo Esaki |
days |
days () |
||||
98 |
Ivar Giaever |
days |
days () |
||||
99 |
Brian D. Josephson |
days |
days () |
||||
100 |
Antony Hewish |
days |
days () |
||||
101 |
Martin Ryle |
days |
days () |
||||
102 |
Aage Bohr |
days |
days () |
||||
103 |
Ben R. Mottelson |
days |
days () |
||||
104 |
James Rainwater |
days |
days () |
||||
105 |
Burton Richter |
days |
days () |
||||
106 |
Samuel Ting |
days |
days () |
||||
107 |
Philip W. Anderson |
days |
days () |
||||
108 |
Nevill F. Mott |
days |
days () |
||||
109 |
John van Vleck |
days |
days () |
||||
110 |
Pyotr Kapitsa |
days |
days () |
||||
111 |
Arno A. Penzias |
days |
days () |
||||
112 |
Robert W. Wilson |
days |
days () |
||||
113 |
Sheldon L. Glashow |
days |
days () |
||||
114 |
Abdus Salam |
days |
days () |
||||
115 |
Steven Weinberg |
days |
days () |
||||
116 |
James Cronin |
days |
days () |
||||
117 |
Val L. Fitch |
days |
days () |
||||
118 |
Nicolaas Bloembergen |
days |
days () |
||||
119 |
Arthur L. Schawlow |
days |
days () |
||||
120 |
Kai Siegbahn |
days |
days () |
||||
121 |
Kenneth G. Wilson |
days |
days () |
||||
122 |
S. Chandrasekhar |
days |
days () |
||||
123 |
William A. Fowler |
days |
days () |
||||
124 |
Carlo Rubbia |
days |
days () |
||||
125 |
Simon van der Meer |
days |
days () |
||||
126 |
Klaus von Klitzing |
days |
days () |
||||
127 |
Gerd Binnig |
days |
days () |
||||
128 |
Heinrich Rohrer |
days |
days () |
||||
129 |
Ernst Ruska |
days |
days () |
||||
130 |
Johannes G. Bednorz |
days |
days () |
||||
131 |
Karl A. Müller |
days |
days () |
||||
132 |
Leon M. Lederman |
days |
days () |
||||
133 |
Melvin Schwartz |
days |
days () |
||||
134 |
Jack Steinberger |
days |
days () |
||||
135 |
Hans G. Dehmelt |
days |
days () |
||||
136 |
Wolfgang Paul |
days |
days () |
||||
137 |
Norman F. Ramsey |
days |
days () |
||||
138 |
Jerome I. Friedman |
days |
days () |
||||
139 |
Henry W. Kendall |
days |
days () |
||||
140 |
Richard E. Taylor |
days |
days () |
||||
141 |
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes |
days |
days () |
||||
142 |
Georges Charpak |
days |
days () |
||||
143 |
Russell A. Hulse |
days |
days () |
||||
144 |
Joseph H. Taylor |
days |
days () |
||||
145 |
Bertram Brockhouse |
days |
days () |
||||
146 |
Clifford Shull |
days |
days () |
||||
147 |
Martin L. Perl |
days |
days () |
||||
148 |
Frederick Reines |
days |
days () |
||||
149 |
David M. Lee |
days |
days () |
||||
150 |
Douglas D. Osheroff |
days |
days () |
||||
151 |
Robert C. Richardson |
days |
days () |
||||
152 |
Steven Chu |
days |
days () |
||||
153 |
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji |
days |
days () |
||||
154 |
William D. Phillips |
days |
days () |
||||
155 |
Robert B. Laughlin |
days |
days () |
||||
156 |
Horst L. Störmer |
days |
days () |
||||
157 |
Daniel C. Tsui |
days |
days () |
||||
158 |
Gerardus 't Hooft |
days |
days () |
||||
159 |
Martinus Veltman |
days |
days () |
||||
160 |
Zhores Alferov |
days |
days () |
||||
161 |
Jack Kilby |
days |
days () |
||||
162 |
Herbert Kroemer |
days |
days () |
||||
163 |
Eric A. Cornell |
days |
days () |
||||
164 |
Wolfgang Ketterle |
days |
days () |
||||
165 |
Carl Wieman |
days |
days () |
||||
166 |
Raymond Davis, Jr. |
days |
days () |
||||
167 |
Riccardo Giacconi |
days |
days () |
||||
168 |
Masatoshi Koshiba |
days |
days () |
||||
169 |
Alexei A. Abrikosov |
days |
days () |
||||
170 |
Vitaly Ginzburg |
days |
days () |
||||
171 |
Anthony J. Leggett |
days |
days () |
||||
172 |
David Gross |
days |
days () |
||||
173 |
Hugh D. Politzer |
days |
days () |
||||
174 |
Frank Wilczek |
days |
days () |
||||
175 |
Roy J. Glauber |
days |
days () |
||||
176 |
John L. Hall |
days |
days () |
||||
177 |
Theodor W. Hänsch |
days |
days () |
||||
178 |
John C. Mather |
days |
days () |
||||
179 |
George Smoot |
days |
days () |
||||
180 |
Albert Fert |
days |
days () |
||||
181 |
Peter Grünberg |
days |
days () |
||||
182 |
Makoto Kobayashi |
days |
days () |
||||
183 |
Toshihide Maskawa |
days |
days () |
||||
184 |
Yoichiro Nambu |
days |
days () |
||||
185 |
Willard Boyle |
days |
days () |
||||
186 |
Charles K. Kao |
days |
days () |
||||
187 |
George E. Smith |
days |
days () |
||||
# |
Laureate |
Date of birth |
Date of |
Age upon |
Days lived |
Date of death |
Lifespan |
Trivia
- One person has won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: John Bardeen first won it in 1956, and then again in 1972.
- Births by century
- 19th century: 1st, Johannes van der Waals; last, Dennis Gabor (55 total)
- 20th century: 1st, Ernest Lawrence; most recent, Eric A. Cornell (131 total)
- Deaths by century
- 20th century: 1st, Pierre Curie; last, Louis Néel (95 total)
- 21st century: 1st, Clifford Shull; most recent, Vitaly Ginzburg (14 total)