Will Hawking or Penrose ever win Nobel Prize?

[Nenad]

my question is simple: Will Hawking or Penrose ever win Nobel Prize? And if yes, when do you think it will come.

[selfAdjoint]

Hawking maybe, if they ever get to study a real black hole and confirm his radiation. Penrose I doubt it, unless he or somebody else brings home a TOE based on twistors that can be tested by genuine experiments and pass them. Even then he would share the prize with "whoever" (maybe Witten, for example).

The Nobel committee has historically been snotty to theorists. Einstein got his for the photoelectric effect, not relativity; others had to wait till some experimentalists confirmed their ideas. Witten has won the Field medal of the mathematicians - their equivalent of the Nobel - but it will be a long long time before they give him the Physics Nobel.

[Janitor]

If Penrose has not gotten one by now, I am afraid he never will.

[Stingray]

The Nobel committee likes to make sure that they're never wrong. They'll only award a prize if there is very strong experimental evidence.