Background to the Nobel Prize to the Braggs

The Nobel Committees have to follow the nominations submitted for a specific year. During the early phase of X-ray crystallography, a limited number of scientists were active. In 1914 Max von Laue and William Henry Bragg were both nominated and could have been awarded a joint Nobel Prize. However, a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, Allvar Gullstrand, was well aware of the activities in the field and strongly recommended that only von Laue should receive the prize since a main contributor, William Laurence Bragg, was not nominated. Next year, when the First World War had started, there were few nominations, but now both Braggs, father and son, were nominated. Gullstrand was very pleased and recommended them both for the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics. The rest of the committee agreed and this then became the decision of the Royal Academy for Sciences, Stockholm.