Theoretical physicists are less and less likely to receive Nobel prizes during their lifetime. It took 50 years for Higgs to get his.
Nobel prizes reward experimentally verified discoveries and I suspect the direct observation of a black hole is what finally got Penrose his Nobel. But discoveries like Hawking radiation didn't result in a Nobel prize because even though it is a well accepted idea among physicists, it hasn't been observed yet.
As theories predict things that require more and more extreme conditions and precise instruments, the time between theory and experimental validation gets longer and longer.
Nobel prizes reward experimentally verified discoveries and I suspect the direct observation of a black hole is what finally got Penrose his Nobel. But discoveries like Hawking radiation didn't result in a Nobel prize because even though it is a well accepted idea among physicists, it hasn't been observed yet.
As theories predict things that require more and more extreme conditions and precise instruments, the time between theory and experimental validation gets longer and longer.