Texas physicist George Sudarshan will share the 2010 Dirac Medal and Prize for his work on the fundamental forces of nature.
AUSTIN, Texas--Texas physicist George Sudarshan will share the 2010 Dirac Medal and Prize with Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo for the two scientists' work on the fundamental forces of nature.
The prize is given by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy.
The award recognizes the physicists' fundamental contributions to the understanding of weak interactions and other aspects of theoretical physics. The weak interaction is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, along with strong interaction, electromagnetism and gravity. It is crucial to the structure of our universe, as it, among other things, causes fusion in the sun.
Sudarshan’s important contributions to theoretical physics include the discovery (with Robert Marshak) of the V-A theory of weak interactions, which opened the way to the full description of the unified electroweak theory. He has also made innovative discoveries in the field of Quantum Optics, including the Optical Equivalence Theorem, which provides the foundation upon which the investigations of the manifestly quantum or non-classical character of the electromagnetic field are based.
Cabibbo, of the University La Sapienza in Rome, Italy, was cited for his important contributions to theoretical physics include the recognition of the significance of mixing in weak interactions, which has established the existence of a new class of physical constants, whose first example is the Cabibbo angle. This angle determines the mixing of strange quarks with non-strange quarks and has been measured experimentally. With the discovery of a third family of quarks and leptons, quark mixing led to the understanding of the phenomenon of CP violation. Cabibbo is currently chair of ICTP's Scientific Council.
ICTP's Dirac Medal is given in honour of P.A.M. Dirac, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and a staunch friend of the Centre. It is awarded annually on Dirac's birthday, August 8, to scientists who have made significant contributions to physics. The Medallists also receive a prize of $5,000.
For additional information about the Dirac Medal and a complete list of previous winners, see http://prizes.ictp.it/Dirac.
Comments 3
Congratulations to Professor Sudarshan, and kudos to U.T. as there has been at least one other U.T. physicist who was awarded the Dirac medal and prize, my father, Bryce DeWitt, back in the 1980s (http://www.utexas.edu/news/2004/10/20/nr_physics/).
may i use this image to include in wikipedia?
Yes you may.