Nobel Laureates

Alvin Roth

Roth, a visiting professor and Stanford alum who becomes a full Stanford faculty member in 2013, is a pioneer in the field of game theory and experimental economics and in their application to the design of new economic institutions. As one of the first "microeconomic engineers," Roth has redesigned the market for kidney exchange, the organization that matches medical residents with hospitals, public school choice systems and a variety of other institutions.

Stanford visiting Professor Alvin Roth wins Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

Brian Kobilka

Brian Kobilka, MD, professor and chair of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on G-protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs.

Stanford scientist Brian Kobilka wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Thomas J. Sargent

Thomas J Sargent, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; shared the 2011 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Christopher A. Sims for research that shed light on the cause-and-effect relationship between the economy and policy instruments such as interest rates and government spending.

Andrew Fire

Andrew Fire, the George D. Smith Professor in Molecular and Genetic Medicine and Professor of Pathology and Genetics, along with Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, won the Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine in 2006. The pair are part of a team of researchers credited with recognizing that certain RNA molecules can be used to turn off specific genes in animal cells. The discovery, made while Fire was at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology in Baltimore, marked the first time that biologists were able to selectively "silence" the voice of one gene in the cacophony of the tens of thousands that give a cell its marching orders from development to death. Their description of the process, called RNA interference or RNAi, in Nature in 1998, jumpstarted a new biological field by opening up previously inaccessible areas of research.

Roger Kornberg

Roger Kornberg a professor of structural biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in understanding how DNA is converted into RNA, a process known as transcription. In 2001 Kornberg published the first molecular snapshot of the protein machinery responsible – RNA polymerase – in action. The finding helped explain how cells express all the information in the human genome, and how that expression sometimes goes awry, leading to cancer, birth defects and other disorders.

A. Michael Spence

A. Michael Spence, Philip H. Knight Professor, emeritus, and former dean of the Graduate School of Business; at Stanford 1990-2000. Awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for analyses of markets with asymmetric information."

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics, emeritus; at Stanford 1974-1976 and 1988-2001. Awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for analyses of markets with asymmetric information."

Robert Laughlin

Robert Laughlin, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences; professor of physics and applied physics; at Stanford 1985-present. Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics with Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations."

Since receiving the prize, Laughlin has supported recruitment of talented new faculty and continued to expand the depth and scope of his own research, which is theoretical and focuses on how self-organization and self-assembly arise in nature. This theme is applicable in fields as diverse as cosmology and biology, explaining Laughlin's work on topics including subtle ordering phenomena in correlated-electron materials, the physics of transcription regulation in biology and the quantum mechanics of black holes. About one-third of his research students are undergraduates.

Myron S. Scholes

Myron S. Scholes, the Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus; at Stanford's Graduate School of Business 1983-1996. Senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution 1987-1996. Awarded the 1997 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Robert C. Merton "for a new method to determine the value of derivatives."

Since receiving the prize, Scholes has used his background in options pricing, capital markets, tax policies and the financial services industry as a managing partner for Oak Hill Capital Management. He also is involved in the private and public investment groups of the Robert M. Bass organization. He also consults widely with many financial institutions, corporations and exchanges and continues to lecture worldwide. Scholes was a principal and limited partner at Long-Term Capital Management, L.P., an investment management firm, from 1993 to 1998.

Steven Chu

Steven Chu, the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics; at Stanford 1987-present. Awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."

Since receiving the prize, Chu has continued his studies of laser cooling and trapping of atoms and their applications. He also has expanding his research scope to include polymer physics and biophysics at the single-molecule level. As virtually all knowledge of chemical and biochemical processes has been deduced from experiments on bulk samples of molecules, looking at individual molecules - such as those involved in DNA replication, RNA transcription and protein folding - may elucidate their complex behavior. Chu served as chair of the Physics Department from 1990 to 1993 and from 1999 to September 2001 and is a member of the executive committee for Bio-X, an interdisciplinary research initiative at Stanford.

Douglas Osheroff

Douglas Osheroff, the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics; at Stanford 1987-present. Awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics with David M. Lee and Robert C. Richardson "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3."

Since receiving the prize, Osheroff's research has continued to focus on the properties of matter near Absolute Zero. He recently received a NASA grant to carry out two fundamental physics experiments to further explore the properties of superfluid helium-3. He participates in numerous outreach efforts to encourage scientific education both inside and outside the university. He teaches in the Physics Department, where he recently became chair.

Martin Perl

Martin Perl, professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC); at Stanford 1963-present. Awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics "for the discovery of the tau lepton." He shared the award "for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics" with Frederick Reines, who was cited "for the detection of the neutrino."

Since receiving the prize, Perl has continued in basic scientific research. He conducts what he calls "unpopular experiments in elementary particle physics that could yield unexpected and profound results." These experiments consist of searches for isolated elementary particles with a fraction of the electric charge of the electron. (All elementary particles either have no electric charge, or the same charge as the electron, or some integer multiple of that charge.) Most scientists in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology do not believe such particles exist, but Perl thinks that searches for them have not been comprehensive and that no accepted theory objects to their existence. His group is looking for these particles in meteoritic material from an asteroid formed four or five billion years ago when the solar system was new. Perl also works on the SLAC-based B Factory collaboration to study matter and antimatter.

Douglass North

Douglass C. North, the Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis; at Hoover 1997-present. Awarded the 1993 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Robert W. Fogel "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change."

Since receiving the prize, North has conducted research in topics including property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, growth of government, and economic and social change. In 1996, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

Gary Becker

Gary Becker, the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago; at Hoover 1990-present. Awarded the 1992 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including nonmarket behavior."

Since receiving the prize, Becker has focused his research on habits and addictions, formation of preferences, human capital and population growth. He is a columnist for Business Week and served as an economic policy adviser in the 1996 Bob Dole presidential campaign.

William F. Sharpe

William F. Sharpe, the STANCO 25 Professor in the Graduate School of Business, Emeritus; at Stanford 1970-present. Awarded the 1990 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Harry M. Markowitz and Merton H. Miller "for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics."

Since receiving the prize, Sharpe has focused on research, teaching and helping found a company designed to bring knowledge from the field of financial economics to bear on the problems individual investors have saving and investing for retirement. Since 1996, the company, Financial Engines, has employed computer and communications technology to make high-quality advice available to individuals at low cost.

Richard E. Taylor

Richard E. Taylor, the Lewis M. Terman Professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; at Stanford 1952-1958 and 1962-present. Awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome I. Friedman and Henry W. Kendall "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."

Since receiving the prize, Taylor has continued research at SLAC and in the Physics Department. His research interests include experimental particle physics, gravitational waves and space-based X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy.

Paul Berg

Paul Berg, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research, Emeritus, and director emeritus of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine; at Stanford 1959-present. Awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant DNA." The other half of the award went to Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids."

Since receiving the prize, Berg has continued to conduct research in the Department of Biochemistry, where his focus is the mechanism of repairing DNA damage. He continues to influence federal policy regarding stem cell research, biotechnology and human cloning.

Burton Richter

Burton Richter, the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; at Stanford 1956-present. Awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics with Samuel C. C. Ting "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind."

Since receiving the prize, Richter has pursued research and administration. From 1976 to 1982, he continued his research at SLAC, but extension of the work required a major advance in high-energy accelerators. Richter went into administration, serving as director of SLAC from 1984 to 1999, to turn that vision into what is now a reality. He has since returned to physics research, focusing mainly on neutrino physics, and science policy. He is the current president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

Kenneth J. Arrow

Kenneth J. Arrow, the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Emeritus; at Stanford 1949-68, 1979-present. Awarded the 1972 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with John R. Hicks "for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory."

Since receiving the prize, Arrow has concentrated on research in economic theory and, to a lesser extent, operations. He has engaged in collective studies designed to influence energy and environmental policy. He has participated in the National Research Council and presided over several learned societies. At Stanford, he has served as a chair of the Faculty Advisory Board and of the Faculty Senate.