Particle theorists David Gross, David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interactions.” The laureates are, respectively, professors of physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Caltech, and MIT. The discovery was made in 1973 by Gross and Wilczek at Princeton University and, independently, by Politzer at Harvard University. At the time, Wilczek was Gross's graduate student and Politzer was a graduate student of Sidney Coleman.