Below is a list of the prizewinners during the period 1981–1990 with a description of the works which won them their prizes:

(1981) N BLOEMBERGEN & A L SCHAWLOW — for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy; K M SIEGBAHN — for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy; (1982) K G WILSON — for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions; (1983) S CHANDRASEKHAR — for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars; W A FOWLER — for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe; (1984) C RUBBIA & S VAN DER MEER — for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction; (1985) K VON KLITZING — for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect; (1986) E RUSKA — for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope; G BINNIG & H ROHRER — for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope; (1987) J G BEDNORZ & K A MUELLER — for their important breakthrough in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials; (1988) L M LEDERMAN, M SCHWARTZ & J STEINBERGER — for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino; (1989) N F RAMSAY — for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks; H G DEHMELT & W PAUL — for the development of the ion trap technique; (1990) J I FRIEDMAN, H W KENDALL & R E TAYLOR — 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.---Provided by publisher