Fundamental Physics Prize

Check winners and nominations of 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize. Check awards winners of 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize. (Click on the Award name to show winners and nominees)

Fundamental Physics Prize Nima Arkani-Hamed (For original approaches to outstanding problems in particle physics, including the proposal of large extra dimensions, new theories for the Higgs boson, novel realizations of supersymmetry, theories for dark matter, and the exploration of new mathematical structures in gauge theory scattering amplitudes.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Alan Guth (For the invention of inflationary cosmology, and for his contributions to the theory for the generation of cosmological density fluctuations arising from quantum fluctuations in the early universe, and for his ongoing work on the problem of defining probabilities in eternally inflating spacetimes.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Alexei Kitaev (For the theoretical idea of implementing robust quantum memories and fault-tolerant quantum computation using topological quantum phases with anyons and unpaired Majorana modes.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Maxim Kontsevich (For numerous contributions which have taken the fruitful interaction between modern theoretical physics and mathematics to new heights, including the development of homological mirror symmetry, and the study of wall-crossing phenomena.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Andrei Linde (For the development of inflationary cosmology, including the theory of new inflation, eternal chaotic inflation and the theory of inflationary multiverse, and for contributing to the development of vacuum stabilization mechanisms in string theory.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Juan Martín Maldacena (For the gauge/gravity duality, relating gravitational physics in a spacetime and quantum field theory on the boundary of the spacetime.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Nathan Seiberg (For major contributions to our understanding of quantum field theory and string theory.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Ashoke Sen (For uncovering striking evidence of strong-weak duality in certain supersymmetric string theories and gauge theories, opening the path to the realization that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory.)
Fundamental Physics Prize Edward Witten (For contributions to physics spanning topics such as new applications of topology to physics, non perturbative duality symmetries, models of particle physics derived from string theory, dark matter detection, and the twistor-string approach to particle scattering amplitudes, as well as numerous applications of quantum field theory to mathematics.)
Special Fundamental Physics Prize 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.)
Special Fundamental Physics Prize Peter Jenni, Fabiola Gianotti, Michel Della Negra, Tejinder Virdee, Guido Tonelli, Joseph Incandela, Lyn Evans (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.)