Last Nobel Prize for Physics of the 1900s to Dutchmen Veltman and 't Hooft

At the close of the twentieth century, the Nobel Prize for Physics again went to the Netherlands, to Martinus Veltman and his former student Gerard 't Hooft. The award provides a welcome boost for physics in the Netherlands at a time when the sciences are failing to attract students, and fundamental, high-risk research is forced to compete more and more with short-term, contract-based applied science that offers little challenge. Looking back over the century, the Dutch have no reason to complain. Since the Nobel Prize was introduced in 1901, no fewer than eight Dutch physicists received science's highest accolade. Veltman and 't Hooft received the prize for theoretical work carried out around 1970 in the field of (electro)weak interaction, one of nature's basic forces.