The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics to Zhores Alferov, director of the Ioffe Physico‐Technical Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia; Herbert Kroemer of the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Jack Kilby, now retired from Texas Instruments Inc (TI) in Dallas, Texas, “for basic work on information and communication technology.” Alferov and Kroemer will share half of the SKr 9 million (about $900 000) prize “for developing semiconductorheterostructures used in high‐speed and opto‐electronics.” Kilby is to receive the other half “for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.” Jack Kilby, coinventor of the integrated circuit, and Zhores Alferov and Herbert Kroemer, early pioneers of semiconductor heterostructures, made today's electronic and communications technology possible.