Five scientists working in Japan, the United States, Switzerland and China lead predictions for the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics ahead of its announcement on 6 October. Their achievements are linked to three lines of research affecting the efficiency of phone and television displays, the design of lower-energy memories and computers, and the development of high-precision electronics and electrical measurements.
How Clarivate identifies influential scientists
The names were included in the Citation Laureates programme compiled by Clarivate, a company specialising in scientific information and analytics. The programme’s experts analyse Web of Science data to identify studies cited by thousands of researchers in subsequent work, then combine citation indicators with a qualitative assessment of the discoveries’ importance and impact on the course of science.
The methodology treats a study becoming the foundation for work by other researchers as an indicator of its author’s scientific influence. Since the programme was launched in 2002, 89 scientists previously selected by the organisation have subsequently received Nobel Prizes, according to its announcement issued in September 2026.
Three scientists advancing OLED display efficiency
The list is not an official nomination for the prize, nor does it mean that the selected scientists will win it in the same year, as years may pass between a researcher’s inclusion in the programme’s predictions and receiving a Nobel Prize. The first line of research involves three scientists whose work has been linked to improving the efficiency of organic light-emitting diodes, known as OLEDs, used in many phone and television displays.
They are Chihaya Adachi, distinguished professor and director of the Centre for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research at Japan’s Kyushu University; Stephen Forrest, professor of engineering at the University of Michigan in the United States; and Mark Thompson, professor of chemistry, chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Southern California.
OLED devices work by passing electricity through thin organic layers, driving their molecules into states containing additional energy that can be released as light. However, first-generation materials could theoretically use only a quarter of the electrically generated excited states, while the other states fell into forms that were difficult to convert directly into light.
Forrest and Thompson, together with their colleagues, helped overcome this limitation by developing phosphorescent materials containing heavy metals. These materials made it possible to use excited states that had previously been lost, theoretically allowing all the generated states to be used. Adachi, meanwhile, developed a different approach known as thermally activated delayed fluorescence.
In this mechanism, molecules use a small amount of thermal energy to return trapped states to a pathway that can emit light, without the heavy metals used in the other approach. This efficiency concerns the use of excited states and does not mean that all the electricity consumed by the device is converted into light reaching the eye.
The case for including the three scientists rests on their success in turning a detailed understanding of quantum behaviour inside molecules into a widely used technology. Their research helped produce more efficient displays and opened the way to reducing energy consumption and reliance on rare metals, extending the impact of the work from studying energy transfer within matter to devices used every day.
Spaldin paves the way for lower-energy memory
The second line of research concerns the work of Nicola Spaldin, professor in the Department of Materials Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, who was selected for her foundational theoretical contributions to multiferroic materials at room temperature. These rare materials possess magnetic and electric polarisation properties at the same time.
Their importance lies in the reciprocal relationship between the two properties: a material’s magnetism can be controlled with an electric field, or its electrical properties can be controlled with a magnetic field. In theory, this allows information to be stored in a magnetic orientation and then controlled with an electric field, opening the way to developing lower-energy memory.
The scientific obstacle was that microscopic conditions favouring the emergence of one property could hinder the emergence of the other. In an influential study published by Spaldin in 2000, she explained why magnetism and electric polarisation rarely coexist in one material. Computer modelling then helped identify materials and atomic arrangements capable of overcoming those obstacles.
Spaldin’s work gave researchers rules that could be used to design new materials instead of relying solely on experimental searches for them. The practical promise of this line of research lies in the possibility of producing smaller computers and memories that consume less electricity. The third line of research is the work of Xue Qikun, president of the Southern University of Science and Technology in China and a professor at Tsinghua University.
Xue observes the quantum anomalous Hall effect
His name is associated with the first experimental observation of the quantum anomalous Hall effect, which his team announced in a study published in the journal Science in 2013 in collaboration with researchers from other institutions. Electrons in ordinary wires encounter obstacles as they move, and part of the electrical energy is converted into heat.
In certain special quantum states, however, channels can form along the edges of a material, carrying current without energy dissipation under ideal conditions. The conventional quantum Hall effect required strong magnetic fields, creating an obstacle to its easy use in devices.
Xue’s team fabricated ultra-thin films of a topological insulator doped with magnetic atoms, then observed the distinctive quantum behaviour without applying an external magnetic field during the measurement. The achievement brought a phenomenon predicted by theory into the laboratory and showed that it could be achieved using the material’s internal magnetism, opening prospects for lower-energy electronics and highly precise electrical measurements.
