The longest wait to win a Nobel Prize in Physics... #shorts

By Dr. Becky

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It used to be around a 10 year gap on average between the science getting done and the Nobel Prize in Physics being being awarded, but as time has marched us on into the 21st century, that gap has gotten steadily bigger with people now waiting 30 years before winning a Nobel Prize. Who waited the longest though? Thanks for asking I’ll tell you, because it is nail bitingly close at the top. So winning the bronze medal, in third place is Yoichiro Nambu, who waited 48 years before winning his Nobel Prize in 2008 "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" - an idea he first published in 1960. It’s the reason why atomic particles like protons and neutrons are heavy, whereas electrons are really light. In the early Universe the nice ordered symmetry gets broken, and then it allows atoms to form. Then winning the silver medal in second place, is Peter Higgs, who waited 49 years before winning his Nobel Prize in 2013, for his prediction of the e