China News Service, October 6 (Gantian) On October 6, local time, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics to Francis Halzen in recognition of his decisive contribution to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources.
Looking back on the history of awarding more than 100 years, the research fields of Nobel Prize winners in physics include macroscopic exploration of the universe and microscopic analysis of atomic structure. Breakthrough researches are profoundly changing the way human beings live their lives.
Awards have been given out for hundreds of years, with both applause and regret.
According to statistics from the Nobel Prize official website, from 1901 to 2025, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded 119 times, and a total of 230 people have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among them, John Bardeen won the physics prize twice, in 1956 and 1972, so as of 2025, the actual number of prizewinners is 229.
Marie Curie also won the Nobel Prize twice, but the awards were different. In 1903, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research on radioactive phenomena; in 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for isolating pure metal radium.
As of 2025, the youngest Nobel Prize winner in physics is Lawrence Bragg. In 1915, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with his father for his research in the field of X-ray crystal structure. He was only 25 years old when he won the award.
The oldest winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics is 96-year-old Arthur Ashkin, who won the award in 2018 for his groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics.
Of course, the 100-year history of the Nobel Prize in Physics has been marked by controversy and regret. For example, American astronomer Edwin Hubble, the discoverer of the expansion of the universe, established Hubble's law, which was considered to be strong evidence of the expansion of the universe. However, he waited for many years and never received the award until his sudden death due to a cerebral thrombosis in 1953.
The research field is broad, and machine learning leverages interdisciplinary research.
Over the years, the physics prize winners have made tireless explorations and pursuits in laser physics, quantum mechanics, universe exploration and other related fields, and have achieved breakthrough research one after another.
On the centenary of the birth of quantum mechanics, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three quantum physicists in recognition of their contributions to realizing macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling effects and energy quantization in circuits.
In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Physics unexpectedly "favored" John Hopfield, a veteran in the field of machine learning, and scientist Jeffrey Hinton, which surprised many people. Some scholars joked that the Nobel Prize in Physics is "stealing jobs" with the Turing Award in the computer industry.
However, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences points out that John Hopfield and Jeffrey Hinton used the tools of physics to lay the foundation for today's powerful machine learning techniques.
Munns, chairman of the Nobel Physics Committee, also said that the two laureates used the basic concepts of statistical physics to design artificial neural networks and build the foundation of machine learning. Related technologies have been used to promote research in many fields, and have also been used in face recognition and language translation in daily life.
So far, a number of scientists of Chinese descent have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among them, Kao Kun won the award in 2009 for his breakthrough achievements in "regarding the transmission of light in fibers for optical communications." He is also known as the "Father of Optical Fibers" and his invention completely changed the global communication model.
What are the major achievements of the Nobel Prize winners in physics in the past ten years?
In 2025, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three quantum physicists, John Clark, Michel H. Devore, and John M. Martinis, in recognition of their contributions to realizing macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling effects and energy quantization in circuits.
In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to American scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian scientist Jeffrey Hinton for their fundamental discoveries and inventions in machine learning using artificial neural networks.
In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists, Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Kraus, and Anne Lullier, for their "experimental method of generating attosecond light pulses for the study of electron dynamics in matter."
In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to French scientist Alain Aspe, American scientist John Krauser and Austrian scientist Anton Zeilinger in recognition of their contributions to "entangled photon experiments, verification of violations of Bell's inequality and the creation of quantum information science".
In 2021, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists. Among them, the Japanese-American scientist Shuro Manabe and the German scientist Klaus Hasselmann won the award for their research on "building a physical model of the Earth's climate, quantifying its variability and reliably predicting global warming", and the Italian scientist Giorgio Parisi won the award for "the discovery of disordered and fluctuating interactions in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales".
In 2020, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three winners for their "discovery of one of the most bizarre phenomena in the universe—black holes." British scientist Roger Penrose won the prize for proving that black holes are a direct result of Einstein's general theory of relativity; German scientist Reinhard Genzel and American scientist Andrea Gates won the prize for discovering supermassive objects in the center of the Milky Way.
In 2019, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to scientists in two fields. Among them, Canadian-American scientist James Peebles won the award for his theoretical discoveries in the field of physical cosmology; while Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Swiss scientist Didier Queloz won the award for "the discovery of exoplanets orbiting other sun-like stars."
In 2018, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to American scientist Arthur Ashkin, French scientist Gérard Mourou and Canadian scientist Donna Strickland in recognition of their breakthrough contributions in the field of laser physics.
In 2017, American physicists Rainer Weiss, Barry Barris and Gip Thorne won the award for their research on gravitational wave detection.
In 2016, British scientists David Solis, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz won the award for their theoretical discovery of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.
