Yes, there have been instances where Nobel Prize winners received awards for inventions or theoretical breakthroughs that were not immediately utilized or constructed but later became significant or inspired future developments. A few examples include:
1. Charles H. Townes (1964, Nobel Prize in Physics) – Townes, along with Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov, won the Nobel Prize for the development of the maser and the theoretical foundation for the laser. Although the maser (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) was not widely utilized at the time, it laid the groundwork for the laser, which later became a crucial tool in various fields, from medicine to communication.
2. Albert Einstein (1921, Nobel Prize in Physics) – Einstein received the prize not for his more famous theory of relativity, but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, which had no immediate large-scale application. However, the theory later became essential in developing modern quantum mechanics and technologies like solar cells.
3. Peter Higgs and François Englert (2013, Nobel Prize in Physics) – They were awarded for their theoretical work on the Higgs boson particle, predicted in the 1960s. The particle itself was not directly observed until 2012 when the Large Hadron Collider was used to detect it, nearly 50 years after the theory was first proposed.