Awards

Awards

Nobel Prizes:

Physics:

1990: Jointly to Jerome I. Freidman, Henry W. Kendall, and Canadian Richard E. Taylor for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.

1991: No American winner.

1992: No American winner.

1993: Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr. for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation.

1994: For pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter, Canadian Bertram N. Brockhouse for the development of neutron spectroscopy, and Clifford G. Shull for the development of the neutron diffraction technique.

1995: For pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics, Martin L. Perl for the discovery of the tau lepton, and Frederick Reines, for the detection of the neutrino.

1996: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff, and Robert C. Richardson for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.

1997: Americans Steven Chu and William D. Phillips, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of France, for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

1998: Robert B. Laughlin, Daniel C. Tsui, and German Horst L. Störmer, for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.

1999: No American winner.

Chemistry:

1990: Elias James Corey for development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis.

1991: No American winner.

1992: Rudolph A. Marcus for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems.

1993: For contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry, Kary B. Mullis for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, and Canadian Michael Smith for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleiotide-based, site-directed mutagenisis and its development for protein studies.

1994: George A. Olah for his contribution to carbocation chemistry.

1995: Americans Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Row-land, and Paul J. Crutzen of the Netherlands, for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone.

1996: Americans Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley, and Sir Harold W. Kroto of Great Britain, for their discovery of fullerenes.

1997: Americans Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker, of Great Britain, for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and Jens C. Skou of Denmark for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+-, ATPase.

1998: For pioneering contributions in developing methods that can be used for theoretical studies of the properties of molecules and the chemical processes in which they are involved, Walter Kohn for his development of the density-functional theory, and John A. Pople, of Great Britain, for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry.

1999: Ahmed H. Zewail for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy.