10 MoST ReceNT PRIze wINNeRS

2018

Arthur Ashkin (US), Gerard Mourou (France) and Donna Strickland (Canada) for inventions in the laser field used for advanced precision instruments in corrective eye surgery and industry.

2017

Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss (US) for the discovery of gravitational waves, a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity.

2016

David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz (Britain) for their study of strange phenomena in unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films.

2015

Takaaki Kajita (Japan) and Arthur McDonald (Canada) for their work on neutrinos

2014

Isamu Akasaki (Japan), Hiroshi Amano (Japan) and Shuji Nakamura (US) for their work on LED lamps

2013

Peter Higgs (Britain) and Francois Englert (Belgium) for their work on the so-called Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that gives mass to other particles.

2012

Serge Haroche (France) and David Wineland (US) for experimental methods used to measure and manipulate quantum systems.

2011

Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess (US) and Brian Schmidt (USAustralian) for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe.

2010

Andre Geim (Netherlands Britain) and Konstantin Novoselov (Russia-Britain) for work on the two-dimensional material graphene.

2009

Charles Kao (Britain-US), Willard S. Boyle (Canada-US) and George E. Smith (US) for work on light transmission with optical fibres and semiconductor circuits