Yoichiro Nambu (String Theory)

Yoichiro Nambu is one of the founders of string theory who independently discovered the physical description of the Veneziano model as vibrating strings. Nambu was already a respected particle physicist for his earlier work in describing the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in particle physics. Dr. Nambu received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.
Though this makes him the only founder of string theory to have received a Nobel Prize, it’s important to note that the Nobel award makes no mention of string theory. In fact, the Nobel can’t be awarded for theoretical work that hasn’t been confirmed or proved useful experimentally.