Em 1796, Benjamin Thompson, conhecido como Conde de Rumford, fez dois presentes separados de $ 5.000 cada, um para a Royal Society de Londres e outro para a Academia de Artes e Ciências dos Estados Unidos para tornar possível que eles sempre premiassem pessoas a cada dois anos por pesquisas de relevo sobre o calor e/ou luz.
A Academia de Artes e Ciências dos Estados Unidos concede o Prêmio Rumford, a Royal Society concede a Medalha Rumford.
Lista dos agraciados 1839–1899
1839: Robert Hare 1862: John Ericsson 1865: Daniel Treadwell 1866: Alvan Clark 1869: George Henry Corliss 1871: Joseph Harrison Jr 1873: Lewis Morris Rutherfurd 1875: John William Draper 1880: Josiah Willard Gibbs 1883: Henry Augustus Rowland 1886: Samuel Pierpont Langley 1888: Albert Abraham Michelson 1891: Edward Charles Pickering 1895: Thomas Alva Edison 1898: James Edward Keeler 1899: Charles Francis Brush
1900–1949
1900: Carl Barus 1901: Elihu Thomson 1902: George Ellery Hale 1904: Ernest Fox Nichols 1907: Edward Goodrich Acheson 1909: Robert Williams Wood 1910: Charles Gordon Curtis 1911: James Mason Crafts 1912: Frederic Eugene Ives 1913: Joel Stebbins 1914: William David Coolidge 1915: Charles Greeley Abbot 1917: Percy Williams Bridgman 1918: Theodore Lyman 1920: Irving Langmuir 1925: Henry Norris Russell 1926: Arthur Holly Compton 1928: Edward Leamington Nichols 1930: John Stanley Plaskett 1931: Karl Taylor Compton 1933: Harlow Shapley 1937: William Coblentz 1939: George Russell Harrison 1941: Vladimir Zworykin 1943: Charles Edward Kenneth Mees 1945: Edwin Land 1947: Edmund Newton Harvey 1949: Ira Sprague Bowen
Desde 1951
1951: Herbert Eugene Ives 1953: Enrico Fermi, Willis Eugene Lamb e Lars Onsager 1955: James Franck 1957: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 1959: George Wald 1961: Charles Hard Townes 1963: Hans Bethe 1965: Samuel Cornette Collins e William David McElroy 1967: Robert Henry Dicke e Cornelis Bernardus van Niel 1968: Maarten Schmidt 1971: Vergabe an drei wissenschaftliche Forschungsgruppen 1973: Edgar Bright Wilson 1976: Bruno Rossi 1980: Gregorio Weber, Chen Ning Yang e Robert L. Mills 1985: Hans Georg Dehmelt, Martin Deutsch, Vernon Willard Hughes e Norman Ramsey 1986: Robert Benjamin Leighton, Frank James Low e Gerald Neugebauer 1992: James R. Norris, Joseph J. Katz e George Feher 1996: John Mather 2008: Sidney Drell, Sam Nunn, William Perry e George Shultz 2015: Federico Capasso e Alfred Yi Cho 2019: Ernst Bamberg, Edward Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck e Georg Nagel
Categoria:Prêmios de física