Dirac Medal

The Dirac Medal is the name of four awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations, named in honour of Professor Paul Dirac, one of the great theoretical physicists of the 20th century.

The Dirac Medal and Lecture (University of New South Wales)

The first-established prize is the Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics, awarded by the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, jointly with the Australian Institute of Physics on the occasion of the public Dirac Lecture.[1] The Lecture and the Medal commemorate the visit to the university in 1975 of Professor Dirac, who gave five lectures there. The lectures were subsequently published as a book Directions of Physics (Wiley, 1978 – H. Hora and J. Shepanski, eds.). Professor Dirac donated the royalties from this book to the University for the establishment of the Dirac Lecture series. The prize includes a silver medal and honorarium. It was first awarded in 1979.

Recipients

Dirac Medal of the ICTP

The Dirac Medal of the ICTP is given each year by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in honour of physicist Paul Dirac. The award, announced each year on 8 August (Dirac's birthday), was first awarded in 1985.[3]

An international committee of distinguished scientists selects the winners from a list of nominated candidates. The Committee invites nominations from scientists working in the fields of theoretical physics or mathematics.

The Dirac Medal of the ICTP is not awarded to Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, or Wolf Prize winners.[3] However, several Dirac Medallists have subsequently won one of these awards.[4][5][6][7]

The medallists receive a prize of US$5,000.

Recipients

Dirac Medal of the IOP

The Dirac Medal is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics (Britain's and Ireland's main professional body for physicists) for "outstanding contributions to theoretical (including mathematical and computational) physics".[13] The award, which includes a £1000 prize, was decided upon by the Institute of Physics in 1985, and first granted in 1987.

Recipients
  • 1987 Stephen Hawking
  • 1988 John Stewart Bell
  • 1989 Roger Penrose
  • 1990 Michael Berry
  • 1991 Rudolf Peierls
  • 1992 Anthony Leggett
  • 1993 David Thouless
  • 1994 Volker Heine
  • 1995 Daniel Walls
  • 1996 John Pendry
  • 1997 Peter Higgs
  • 1998 David Deutsch
  • 1999 Ian Percival
  • 2000 John Cardy
  • 2001 Brian Ridley
  • 2002 John Hannay[14]
  • 2003 Christopher Hull
  • 2004 Michael Green
  • 2005 John Ellis (CERN)
    For his highly influential work on particle physics phenomenology; in particular on the properties of gluons, the Higgs boson and the top quark.[15]
  • 2006 Mike Gillan (University College London)
    For his contributions to the development of atomic-scale computer simulations, which have greatly extended their power and effectiveness across an immense range of applications.[16]
  • 2007 David Sherrington (University of Oxford)
    For his pioneering work in spin glasses.
  • 2008 Bryan Webber (University of Cambridge)
    For his pioneering work in understanding and applying quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong interaction which is one of the three fundamental forces of Nature.
  • 2009 Michael Cates (University of Edinburgh)
    For pioneering work in the theoretical physics of soft materials, particularly in relation to their flow behaviour.
  • 2010 James Binney (University of Oxford)
    For his contribution to our understanding of how galaxies are constituted, how they work and how they were formed.
  • 2011 Christopher Isham (Imperial College London)
    For his major contributions to the search for a consistent quantum theory of gravity and to the foundations of quantum mechanics.
  • 2012 Graham Garland Ross[17] (University of Oxford)
    For his theoretical work in developing both the Standard Model of fundamental particles and forces and theories beyond the Standard Model that have led to many new insights into the origins and nature of the universe.
  • 2013 Stephen M. Barnett (University of Strathclyde)
    For his wide ranging contributions throughout optics research, which both inspire and lead experimental endeavours.
  • 2014 Tim Palmer[18] (University of Oxford)
    For the development of probabilistic weather and climate prediction systems.
  • 2015 John Barrow (University of Cambridge)
    For his combination of mathematical and physical reasoning to increase our understanding of the evolution of the universe, and his use of cosmology to increase our understanding of fundamental physics.
  • 2016 Sandu Popescu (University of Bristol)[19]
    For his fundamental and influential research into nonlocality and his contribution to the foundations of quantum physics.
  • 2017 Michael Duff[20] (Imperial College London and Oxford University)
    For sustained groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics including the discovery of Weyl anomalies, for having pioneered Kaluza-Klein supergravity, and for recognising that superstrings in 10 dimensions are merely a special case of membranes in an 11-dimensional M-theory.
  • 2018 John Chalker, University of Oxford for "his pioneering, deep, and distinctive contributions to condensed-matter theory, particularly in the quantum Hall effect, and to geometrically frustrated magnets."
  • 2019 Richard Keith Ellis, University of Durham for "his seminal work in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) where he performed many of the key calculations that led to the acceptance of QCD as the correct theory of the strong interaction."

Dirac Medal of the WATOC

The Dirac Medal is awarded annually by The World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists "for the outstanding computational chemist in the world under the age of 40". The award was first granted in 1998.

Recipients

Source: WATOC

See also

References
  1. "Dirac Medal awarded to Professor Subir Sachdev". 2015-09-08. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  2. "Dirac Public Lecture: Nobel Laureate Professor Serge Haroche". 2014-12-09. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  3. "ICTP honors four with Dirac Medals". Physics Today. 40 (5): 107–108. 1987. Bibcode:1987PhT....40e.107.. doi:10.1063/1.2820038.
  4. "Witten and Jones receive Fields Medals for physics-related work". Physics Today. 44 (2): 111–112. 1991. Bibcode:1991PhT....44b.111.. doi:10.1063/1.2810004.
  5. "Wolf Prizes go to Ginzburg, Nambu and Moser". Physics Today. 48 (1): 66. 1995. Bibcode:1995PhT....48Q..66.. doi:10.1063/1.2807883.
  6. Schwarzschild, Bertram (2008). "Physics Nobel Prize to Nambu, Kobayashi, and Maskawa for theories of symmetry breaking". Physics Today. 61 (12): 16–20. Bibcode:2008PhT....61l..16S. doi:10.1063/1.3047652.
  7. "Wolf Foundation honors Wheeler for physics, Keller and Sinai for mathematics". Physics Today. 50 (2): 85. 1997. Bibcode:1997PhT....50Q..85.. doi:10.1063/1.2806531.
  8. "ICTP awards Dirac Medals for work in theoretical physics". Physics Today. 46 (3): 99–100. 1993. Bibcode:1993PhT....46c..99.. doi:10.1063/1.2808851.
  9. "ICTP - The Medallists". www.ictp.it.
  10. "ICTP - Dirac Medallists 2017". www.ictp.it.
  11. "ICTP - Dirac Medallists 2018". www.ictp.it.
  12. "ICTP - Dirac Medallists 2019". www.ictp.it.
  13. "Paul Dirac Medal and Prize". Institute of Physics. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  14. "Eighteen Scientists Garner IOP Prizes". Physics Today. 55 (3): 83. January 12, 2007. doi:10.1063/1.2408468 – via physicstoday.scitation.org.
  15. "IoP rewards top British physicists". September 1, 2004 – via www.theguardian.com.
  16. "Britain's top prizes for physics announced". phys.org.
  17. "Dirac medal recipients". www.iop.org.
  18. "2014 Dirac medal". Institute of Physics. Retrieved 2014-12-07.
  19. "Non-locality bags Dirac Medal" (PDF). CERN Courier. Vol. 56 no. 7. 2016-09-01. p. 45.
  20. "2017 Dirac medal". Institute of Physics. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
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