Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, 1/2 of the prize The interference you see on an analogue television screen as you try to tune in to channels might seem an unlikely form of time travel, but within this static hiss lies a glimpse of the first moments of the universe. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson’s…

The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish for their pioneering efforts to tune in to radio broadcasts from the stars. Their development and use of radio-based versions of telescopes has broadened our view of the universe by revealing information about stars in remarkable detail. Sir Martin Ryle…

“Why does the Sun shine?” is one of those questions asked by curious children to which adults struggle to provide a convincing answer. Hans Bethe received the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for revealing how the Sun behaves like a giant nuclear reactor to produce the vast amount of heat and light that supports life…

The protons and neutrons that make up every atomic nucleus behave not like the tiny ping-pong-ball like structures taught in school, but more like gyroscopes that spin about their axes in random directions, generating their own minute magnetic fields. Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell demonstrated how manipulating and analysing the movement of these subatomic spinning…

When Max von Laue showed that X-rays are diffracted in crystals and form characteristic patterns on photographic film, he proved in a single experiment that X-rays are wave-like in nature, and that crystals have a lattice-like structure. What wasn’t clear was whether the structure of the crystal and the wavelength of X-rays had any influence…

The 1914 Nobel Prize for Physics united two issues of identity that had been perplexing physicists in the early 1900s. One was understanding the true nature of the mysterious X-rays. The other was how to prove the theory that crystals consist of atoms arranged in a regular lattice structure. Max von Laue received the award…

On a dark November evening in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was perplexed by a fluorescent screen in his laboratory that was glowing for no apparent reason. Röntgen’s experiment on how cathode-ray tubes emit light appeared to be affecting something that was not part of the study. It took weeks spent eating and sleeping in his…

The 1984 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine celebrated the important contribution of theory and practice in shaping our understanding of the body’s immune system. The hypotheses formulated by Nils Jerne presented a clearer image of the way in which a diverse range of antibodies can be engaged to fight an invader. Georges Köhler and…

The famous X-ray photograph Wilhem Röntgen took of his wife’s hand showed both the potential and the limitations of using X-ray images in medicine. The bones of Röntgen’s wife’s hand can be clearly seen, as can her wedding ring, but soft tissues, blood vessels and nerves are all invisible. Over 70 years later, computed tomography,…

As the workhorses of our internal defence system, we owe an enormous debt to antibodies. Responding to external threats such as disease-causing microorganisms, protein antibody molecules are released by specialized immune cells into the blood stream to disarm the threat. Their mode of attack is target recognition: millions of different molecules can be created, each…