Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation Announces Physics Frontiers
and New Horizons in Physics Prizes Along With Two Special Prizes
NEW YORK and GENEVA, December 11,
2012 /PRNewswire/ --
Two $3,000,000
special Fundamental Physics Prizes have been awarded
to Stephen Hawking and
to seven scientists who led the effort to discover a
Higgs-like particle at CERN's Large Hadron Collider
The winner of the 2013 Fundamental
Physics Prize will be announced at a ceremony at
CERN[i] on March 20, 2013
The Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation Selection Committee,
which is comprised of prior recipients of the Fundamental Physics
Prize and includes Nima Arkani-Hamed, Alan
Guth, Alexei Kitaev,
Maxim Kontsevich, Andrei Linde, Juan Maldacena, Nathan Seiberg, Ashoke
Sen and Edward Witten, is
pleased to announce:
1. The laureates of 2013 Physics Frontiers Prize are:
Charles Kane,
Laurens Molenkamp and
Shoucheng Zhang for the
theoretical prediction and experimental discovery of topological
insulators.
Alexander Polyakov for his
many discoveries in field theory and string theory including the
conformal bootstrap, magnetic monopoles, instantons,
confinement/de-confinement, the quantization of strings in
non-critical dimensions, gauge/string duality and many others. His
ideas have dominated the scene in these fields during the past
decades.
Joseph Polchinski for his
contributions in many areas of quantum field theory and string
theory. His discovery of D-branes has given new insights into
the nature of string theory and quantum gravity, with consequences
including the AdS/CFT correspondence.
2. Laureates of the 2013 Physics Frontiers Prize will
become nominees for the 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize. The
winner of the Fundamental Physics Prize will be announced by
the Selection Committee at a prize ceremony that will take place at
CERN on March 20, 2013.
3. The Physics Frontiers Prize laureates who do not go on
to be awarded the Fundamental Physics Prize will each
receive $300,000 and will
automatically be re-nominated for the Fundamental Physics
Prize each year for the next 5 years.
4. The laureates of 2013 New Horizons in Physics Prize
are:
Niklas Beisert for the
development of powerful exact methods to describe a quantum gauge
theory and its associated string theory.
Davide Gaiotto for
far-reaching new insights about duality, gauge theory, and
geometry, and especially for his work linking theories in different
dimensions in most unexpected ways.
Zohar Komargodski for his work on the dynamics of
four-dimensional field theories. In particular, his proof (with
Schwimmer) of the "a-theorem" has solved a long-standing problem,
leading to deep new insights.
Each of the laureates will receive $100,000.
5. In addition, the Selection Committee, foregoing the regular
nomination process, announces the laureates of two Special
Fundamental Physics Prizes of $3,000,000 each:
One to Stephen Hawking for
his discovery of Hawking radiation from black holes, and his deep
contributions to quantum gravity and quantum aspects of the
early universe.
One to be shared by the leaders of the LHC project, CMS and ATLAS
experiments from the time the LHC was approved by the CERN Council
in 1994, including Peter
Jenni, Fabiola
Gianotti (ATLAS), Michel
Della Negra, Tejinder Singh
Virdee, Guido
Tonelli, Joe
Incandela (CMS) and Lyn
Evans (LHC), for their leadership role in the scientific
endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle
by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron
Collider.
6. All prizes will be funded by the Milner Foundation
"Choosing this year's recipients from such a large
pool of spectacular nominations was a very difficult
task," said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a member of the Selection
Committee. "The selected physicists have done
transformative work spanning a wide range of areas in fundamental
physics. I especially look forward to future breakthroughs from the
first recipients of the New Horizons in Physics
Prize."
"It is a great honour for the LHC's
achievement to be recognised in this way," said
CERN Director General Rolf
Heuer. "This prize recognizes the work of
everyone who has contributed to the project over many years. The
Fundamental Physics Prize underlines the value of fundamental
physics to society, and I am delighted that the Foundation has
chosen to hold its first award ceremony at CERN."
"I am very much pleased with the decisions of the
Selection Committee," commented Yuri Milner. "I hope that the prizes
will bring further recognition to some of the most brilliant minds
in the world and the great accomplishments they have
produced."
###
About the Prizes
The Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation is a not-for-profit
corporation established by the Milner Foundation and dedicated to
advancing our knowledge of the Universe at the deepest level by
awarding annual prizes for scientific breakthroughs, as well as
communicating the excitement of fundamental physics to the public.
According to the Foundation's rules, laureates of all prizes are
chosen by a Selection Committee, which is comprised of prior
recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize. The Selection
Committee for the 2013 prizes is comprised of the following:
- Nima Arkani-Hamed
- Alan Guth
- Alexei Kitaev
- Maxim Kontsevich
- Andrei Linde
- Juan Maldacena
- Nathan Seiberg
- Ashoke Sen
- Edward Witten
Information on the Fundamental Physics Prize is available at:
http://www.fundamentalphysicsprize.org
i. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the
world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its
headquarters in Geneva. At present, its member states are
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech
Republic, Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway,
Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United
Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for
accession. Israel and Serbia are associate
members in the pre-stage to membership. India, Japan,
the Russian Federation,
the United States of America,
Turkey, the European Commission
and UNESCO have observer status.
Media Contacts
Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation:
Leonid Solovyev
solovyev@fundamentalphysicsprize.org
+44-7590-976-334
CERN:
press.office@cern.ch
+41-(0)22-767-34-32
+41-(0)22-767-21-41
SOURCE Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation