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The Nobel Prize in Physics (Swedish: Nobelpriset i fysik) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel (who died in 1896), awarded for outstanding contributions in physics. As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by a committee that consists of five members elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years.
Statistics
The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 1901 to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, of Germany, who received 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. John Bardeen is the only laureate to win the prize twice—in 1956 and 1972. Maria Skłodowska-Curie also won two Nobel Prizes, for physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911. William Lawrence Bragg was, until October 2014, the youngest ever Nobel laureate; he won the prize in 1915 at the age of 25. Two women have won the prize: Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963), which is the least of any of the original five Nobel Prizes. As of 2016, the prize has been awarded to 203 individuals. There have been six years in which the Nobel Prize in Physics was not awarded (1916, 1931, 1934, 1940–1942).