Honors & Awards

DOE Nobel Laureates

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Among the most prestigious scientific awards in the world are the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine.

All three of these Nobel Prizes have been presented since 1901, with the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet. (For more information about the Nobel Prize, visit nobelprize.orgExternal link.)

Going back to the earliest days of the Manhattan Project, the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies blended cutting-edge research and innovative problem-solving to keep the United States in the forefront of scientific discovery. The 113 Nobel Laureates associated with DOE serve as a proud testimony to both the high quality and the impact of the research underwritten by or associated with the Department.

The complete roster of Nobel Prize winners associated with DOE and its predecessor agencies, including biographies and photos is available on OSTI's R&D Accomplishments web page.

Chemistry/Physics Prize
A list of the 113 DOE-affiliated Nobel Prize winners is provided below.
YearPrizeNameHome Institution(s)DOE-SC Affiliation Other DOE Affiliation 
2012 Chemistry Brian K. Kobilka Stanford University School of Medicine
  • Argonne National Laboratory
2011 Physics Saul Perlmutter University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
2009 Chemistry Venkatraman Ramakrishnan MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
2009 Chemistry Thomas A. Steitz Howard Hughes Medical Institute;
Yale University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
2009 Chemistry Ada E. Yonath Weizman Institute of Science, Israel
  • Argonne National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
2008 Chemistry Roger Y. Tsien University of California, San Diego
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Biological and Environmental Research
2008 Physics Yoichiro Nambu Enrico Fermi Institute;
University of Chicago
  • Atomic Energy Commission
2007 Physics Peter Grünberg Forschungszentrum Jülich
  • Argonne National Laboratory
2006 Chemistry Roger D. Kornberg Stanford University
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
2006 Physics John C. Mather Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA)
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
2006 Physics George F. Smoot University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
  • 1994 E.O. Lawrence Award
2005 Chemistry Robert H. Grubbs California Institute of Technology
  • Basic Energy Sciences
2005 Chemistry Richard R. Schrock Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Basic Energy Sciences
2004 Physics David J. Gross Princeton University;
University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Fermi National Laboratory
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
2004 Physics H. David Politzer California Institute of Technology
  • High Energy Physics
2004 Physics Frank Wilczek Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • High Energy Physics
2003 Chemistry Peter Agre Johns Hopkins University
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Biological and Environmental Research 
2003 Chemistry Roderick MacKinnon Rockefeller University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
2003 Physics Alexei A. Abrikosov Institute for Physical Problems
  • Argonne National Laboratory
2003 Physiology or Medicine Sir Peter Mansfield University of Nottingham
  • Basic Energy Sciences
2002 Physics Raymond Davis, Jr. University of Pennsylvania
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
2002 Physics Masatoshi Koshiba University of Tokyo
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
2000 Chemistry Alan J. Heeger University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Argonne National Laboratory
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
2000 Chemistry Alan G. MacDiarmid University of Pennsylvania
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1999 Chemistry Ahmed H. Zewail California Institute of Technology
1999 Physics Martinus J.G. Veltman University of Utrecht, Netherlands;
University of Michigan
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
  • 1998 E.O. Lawrence Award
1998 Chemistry John A. Pople Northwestern University
  • Argonne National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences

 

1998 Physics Robert B. Laughlin Stanford University;
Bell Laboratories
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
1997 Chemistry Paul D. Boyer University of California, Los Angeles
  • Basic Energy Sciences
  • Biological and Environmental Research
1997 Physics Steven Chu Stanford University;
Bell Laboratories
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1997 Physiology or Medicine Stanley B. Prusiner University of California, San Francisco
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
  • Biological and Environmental Research
1996 Chemistry Robert F. Curl, Jr. Rice University
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1996 Chemistry Richard E. Smalley Rice University
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1996 Physics David M. Lee Cornell University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1996 Physics Douglas D. Osheroff Cornell University;
Stanford University
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1995 Chemistry Mario J. Molina Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1995 Chemistry F. Sherwood Rowland University of California, Irvine
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1995 Physics Martin L. Perl Stanford University
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1995 Physics Frederick Reines University of California, Irvine
  • Hanford Site
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1994 Chemistry George A. Olah University of Southern California
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1994 Physics Bertram N. Brockhouse Chalk River Laboratories, Canada
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences 
1994 Physics Clifford G. Shull Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1993 Physics Russell A. Hulse Princeton University;
University of Massachusetts
  • Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
1993 Physics Joseph H. Taylor, Jr. Princeton University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
1992 Chemistry Rudolph A. Marcus California Institute of Technology

 

1992 Physics Georges Charpak
  • Fermi National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
  • CERN
1990 Physics Jerome I. Friedman Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1990 Physics Henry W. Kendall Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1990 Physics Richard E. Taylor Stanford University
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1989 Chemistry Thomas R. Cech University of Colorado
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1989 Physics Norman F. Ramsey Harvard University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
1988 Chemistry Johann Deisenhofer Max Planck Institute
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Argonne National Laboratory
  • Biological and Environmental Research
1988 Physics Leon M. Lederman Columbia University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1988 Physics Melvin Schwartz Columbia University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1988 Physics Jack Steinberger Columbia University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1987 Chemistry Donald J. Cram University of California, Los Angeles
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1986 Chemistry Yuan T. Lee University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1986 Chemistry Dudley R. Herschbach Harvard University
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1983 Physics William Alfred Fowler California Institute of Technology
1983 Physiology or Medicine Barbara McClintock Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1983 Chemistry Henry Taube University of California, Berkeley;
Stanford University
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1982 Physics Kenneth G. Wilson Cornell University
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1981 Chemistry Roald Hoffmann Cornell University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1980 Physics Val Logsdon Fitch Princeton University
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1980 Physics James Watson Cronin University of Chicago
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1979 Physiology or Medicine Allan M. Cormack Tufts University
1979 Physics Sheldon Lee Glashow Harvard University;
Lyman Laboratory
  • Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1979 Physics Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste;
Imperial College, London
  • Fermi National Laboratory
  • High Energy Physics
1979 Physics Steven Weinberg Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • High Energy Physics
  • Nuclear Physics
1977 Chemistry Ilva Prigogine University of Texas
  • Office of Energy Research
1976 Physics Burton Richter Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
  • CERN
1976 Physics Samuel Chao Chung Ting Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • CERN
  • 1976 E.O. Lawrence Award
1975 Physics Ben Roy Mottelson Niels Bohr Institute
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
  • CERN
1975 Physics Leo James Rainwater Columbia University
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
  • 1963 E.O. Lawrence Award
1974 Chemistry Paul J. Flory Cornell University;
Stanford University
1973 Physics Ivar Giaever General Electric Research and Development Center;
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
1972 Physics Leon Neil Cooper Brown University
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
1972 Physics John Bardeen University of Illinois
1972 Physics John Robert Schrieffer University of Illinois
1969 Physics Murray Gell-Mann California Institute of Technology
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
1968 Physics Luis Walter Alvarez
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1967 Physics Hans Albrecht Bethe Cornell University
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1965 Physics Richard P. Feynman Princeton University;
California Institute of Technology
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1965 Physics Julian Schwinger Harvard University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory
1964 Physics Charles Hard Townes University of California, Berkeley;
Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
Columbia University
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Basic Energy Sciences
1963 Physics Eugene Paul Wigner University of Chicago
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
1963 Physics Maria Goeppert-Mayer
  • Argonne National Laboratory
1962 Physiology or Medicine James Dewey Watson Cavendish Laboratory;
California Institute of Technology
1961 Physics Robert Hofstadter Princeton University;
Stanford University
1961 Chemistry Melvin Calvin
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1960 Physics Donald Arthur Glaser University of Michigan;
University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1960 Chemistry Willard Frank Libby Columbia University;
University of California, Los Angeles
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
1959 Physics Owen Chamberlain University of California, Berkeley;
University of Chicago
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1959 Physics Emilio Gino Segrè University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1958 Physiology or Medicine George Wells Beadle California Institute of Technology;
University of Chicago
1957 Physics Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee Columbia University
1957 Physics Chen Ning Yang Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
1956 Physics John Bardeen University of Illinois;
Bell Laboratories
1955 Physics Polykarp Kusch Columbia University
1955 Physics Willis Eugene Lamb Columbia University;
Stanford University
1952 Physics Felix Bloch Stanford University
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • CERN
1952 Physics Edward Mills Purcell Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1951 Chemistry Edwin Mattison McMillan
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
1951 Chemistry Glenn Theodore Seaborg University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
1946 Physiology or Medicine Hermann Joseph Muller Amherst College;
Indiana University
1944 Physics Isidor Isaac Rabi Columbia University;
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory
1939 Physics Ernest Orlando Lawrence University of California, Berkeley
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1938 Physics Enrico Fermi Columbia University;
University of Chicago
1936 Physics Carl David Anderson California Institute of Technology;
National Defense Research Committee
  • Office of Scientific Research and Development
1934 Chemistry Harold Clayton Urey Johns Hopkins University
1934 Physiology or Medicine George Hoyt Whipple University of Rochester
1927 Physics Arthur Holly Compton University of Chicago
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
1925 Physics James Franck University of Chicago
  • US Atomic Energy Commission
Last modified: 12/5/2012 12:55:35 PM