Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Italian Parisi and to Manabe and Hasselmann

Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Italian Parisi and to Manabe and Hasselmann

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Italian Giorgio Parisi, Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for their groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems”.

So far, 20 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Italians since the beginning of the prize. Of the 20 awards, 12 are scientific, and of these, 5 are for Physics, 6 for Medicine, and one for Chemistry.

Of the 20 winners, only two were women: Grazia Deledda, for Literature in 1926, and Rita Levi Montalcini, for Medicine 60 years later, in 1986.

The last Nobel Prize awarded to a researcher born in Italy was that of 2007 to Mario Capecchi, active in the USA, but to find an Italian researcher who carried out most of his work in Italy we have to go back 62 years, to the Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded in 1959 to Giulio Natta.