2000 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Zhores Alferov, Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 10 October 2000.

The citation

Half of the prize goes jointly to Zhores Alferov and Herbert Kroemer "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics". Half of the prize goes to Jack Kilby "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit".

The laureates

Zhores Alferov was born in 1930 in Vitebsk, Belorussia, USSR (now Belarus), and is affiliated with A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg. Herbert Kroemer was born in 1928 in Weimar, Germany, and is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jack Kilby was born in 1923 in Jefferson City, the United States, and is affiliated with Texas Instruments, Dallas.

Why it matters

Their work is found in almost every piece of modern electronics. Heterostructures made fast transistors, laser diodes and satellite links possible, while the integrated circuit, which Kilby first demonstrated in 1958, put whole circuits onto a single chip.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.