According to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the department is the 9th best physics department in the world and best in Europe. It is ranked equal 7th place in the UK by GPA according to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014. The University has a long history of physics dating back to 1874, which includes 12 Nobel laureates, most recently Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their discovery of graphene.