Isaac Newton Medal and Prize | |
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Awarded for | World-leading contributions to physics by an individual of any nationality. |
Sponsored by | Institute of Physics |
Country | ![]() |
Presented by | Institute of Physics ![]() |
Reward(s) | Gold medal, £1000 |
First awarded | 2008 |
Website | Official website |
The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics (IOP) accompanied by a prize of £1,000.[2] The award is given to a physicist, regardless of subject area, background or nationality, for outstanding contributions to physics. The award winner is invited to give a lecture at the Institute. It is named in honour of Sir Isaac Newton.
The first medal was awarded in 2008 to Anton Zeilinger, having been announced in 2007.[3] It gained national recognition in the UK in 2013 when it was awarded for technology that could lead to an 'invisibility cloak'.[4][5] By 2018 it was recognised internationally as the highest honour from the IOP.[6] In 2020, a citation study identified it as one of the five most prestigious prizes in physics.[7]
Year | Name | Rationale (for) |
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2008 | Anton Zeilinger | "his pioneering conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, which have become the cornerstone for the rapidly-evolving field of quantum information"[3][8] |
2009 | Alan Guth | "his invention of the inflationary universe model, his recognition that inflation would solve major problems confronting then-standard cosmology, and his calculation, with others, of the spectrum of density fluctuations that gave rise to structure in the universe"[9] |
2010 | Edward Witten | "his many profound contributions that have transformed areas of particle theory, quantum field theory and general relativity"[10][11] |
2011 | Leo Kadanoff | "inventing conceptual tools that reveal the deep implications of scale invariance on the behavior of phase transitions and dynamical systems"[12] |
2012 | Martin Rees | his outstanding contributions to relativistic astrophysics and cosmology[13][14] |
2013 | John Pendry | “seminal contributions to surface science, disordered systems and photonics”[15][4][16][5] |
2014 | Deborah S. Jin | "pioneering the field of quantum-degenerate Fermi gases"[17][18][19] |
2015 | Eli Yablonovitch | "visionary and foundational contributions to photonic nanostructures"[20][21][22] |
2016 | Tom Kibble | "outstanding lifelong commitment to physics" (posthumously)[23] |
2017 | Charles L. Bennett | "leadership of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a satellite experiment that revolutionized cosmology, transforming it from an order-of-magnitude game to a paragon of precision science"[24][25] |
2018 | Paul Corkum | "his outstanding contributions to experimental physics"[6][26][27][28] |
2019 | Michael Pepper | "the creation of the field of semiconductor nanoelectronics and discovery of new quantum phenomena"[29][30][31][32][33] |
2020 | Nader Engheta | "groundbreaking innovation and transformative contributions to electromagnetic complex materials and nanoscale optics, and for pioneering development of the fields of near-zero-index metamaterials, and material-inspired analogue computation and optical nanocircuitry" |
2021 | David Deutsch | "founding the discipline named quantum computation and establishing quantum computation's fundamental idea, now known as the ‘qubit’ or quantum bit"[34] |
2022 | Margaret Murnane | "pioneering and sustained contributions to the development of ultrafast lasers and coherent X-ray sources and the use of such sources to understand the quantum nature of materials"[35] |
2023 | James Binney | "advancing the science of stellar dynamics and using strong physical intuition to widen and deepen our understanding of how galaxies are structured and formed."[36] |