As a sample because I can't answer your question more broadly: Peter Higgs proposed the Higgs boson nearly 50 years before winning the Nobel Prize. Just the theory without confirmation wasn't enough. Then when the LHC detected it, he (along with an LHC scientist) won the Prize basically immediately.
Quantum dots have an increasing relevance to display technology, so it feels reasonable to look back and reward a discovery which was more important than it seemed at the time.
Quantum dots have an increasing relevance to display technology, so it feels reasonable to look back and reward a discovery which was more important than it seemed at the time.