Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation Announces Physics Frontiers and New Horizons in Physics Prizes Along With Two Special Prizes

New York And Geneva (ots/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

ots Originaltext: Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation
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