2025 Physics World predictions are in:
Peter Shor, Gilles Brassard, Charles H. Bennet and David Deutsch (only 3 obviously) for quantum algorithms
Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and Paul Steinhardt for cosmic inflation
John Pendry, David R. Smith and Federico Capasso for metamaterial
They also say...
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden were asked to predict the prize. For physics they predict
Yakir Aharonov and Michael Berry for the Aharonov–Bohm effect and the Berry phase
Hidetoshi Katori and Jun Ye for the development of the optical lattice clock.
You can see the...
Here is another article on how the least likely Nobel laureate in physics, Gustaf Dalén (for lighthouse technology) won his Nobel prize:
M. Harris, How a Swedish inventor was honoured for a technology that nearly killed him (2025), Physics World
Spanish science popularizer QuantumFracture (José Luis Crespo) made a list of his candidates:
Peter Zoller, Ignacio Cirac and David Deutsch for piooneering quantum computing
Allan H. MacDonald, Pablo Jarrillo-Herrero, and Rafi Bistritzer for the discovery of the magic angle in graphene...
This Physics World article on Gabriel Lippman's Nobel Prize in Physics is very interesting. It says why he was awarded a prize on "color photography" despite other more fundamental discoveries were made by other scientists :
M. Harris, How an obscure version of colour photography beat quantum...
Interestingly, The Economist says that Clarivate predictions are getting less accurate in time:
Source
People are using big data to try to predict Nobel laureates (under paywall)
I agree. The point is not that, the point is to ask why OP cared about the wave equation or the order of the derivative, I still do not get what does OP want to know really.