CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter
Cluster of ExcellenceCUI: Advanced
Imaging of Matter
Imaging of Matter
Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics 2020 and 2021 awarded
11 November 2021
Photo: © Joachim Herz Stiftung/Claudia Höhne
In the cupola room of the Hamburg Planetarium (from left): Dr. Henneke Lütgerath, Chairman of the Executive Board of the Joachim Herz Foundation, Prof. Albrecht Wagner, former member of the Board of Trustees of the Joachim Herz Foundation and patron of the award ceremony, Prof. Eugene Demler, award winner 2021, Katharina Fegebank, 2. Mayor and Science Senator of Hamburg, Prof. Valery Rubakov, laureate 2020, Dr. Nina Lemmens, Executive Board of the Joachim Herz Foundation, and Prof. Volker Schomerus, jury chairman for the award, leading scientist at DESY and spokesperson of the Wolfgang Pauli Centre.
In the presence of Katharina Fegebank, Second Mayor and Science Senator of Hamburg, Eugene Demler and Valery Rubakov were honored yesterday with the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. Rubakov is a senior scientist at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and a professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University. He received the 2020 Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics for his contributions to matter in the early universe. Demler, who moved to ETH Zurich this fall after many years at Harvard University, received the 2021 prize for his research on quantum matter.
Rubakov, born in 1955, is among the most recognized contemporary Russian theoretical physicists. He covers a broad field of research and is considered an expert in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology.
Demler, born in 1972, is a world-renowned expert in theoretical quantum physics. Among other things, his work laid the foundation for groundbreaking experiments to understand quantum effects and to be able to determine the interaction of the smallest elements in a so-called many-particle system in quantum simulations.
More about the prize ceremony (in German).
In honor of the two laureates, an international symposium will also be held in Hamburg from November 8 to 12, 2021.
The prize
The Joachim Herz Foundation has been awarding the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics since 2010 together with the Wolfgang Pauli Centre of Universität Hamburg, the Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the two Clusters of Excellence of Universität Hamburg "CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter" and "Quantum Universe". The prize of 137,036 euros for outstanding research achievements in theoretical physics is one of the highest endowed awards for physics in Germany. The prize sum is an allusion to Sommerfeld's fine structure constant, which plays an important role in theoretical physics.
