1956 Nobel Prize in Physics

Three American physicists, John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley, were honored last month in Stockholm, where they were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for “their investigations on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect”. Each of the three winners of the prize received a gold medal, a diploma, and a share of the $38 633 award. Ceremonies to mark the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor of dynamite under whose will the Nobel fund was established, were held on December 10th by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences in the concert hall at Stockholm. The presentations were made by King Gustaf Adolph of Sweden before an assembly of some 2000 persons. It was the first time that three physicists received jointly a single Nobel Prize since 1903, when the physics award was shared by Henri Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie.