Dirac Medallists 1993

Sergio Ferrara, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland at the time of the award

Daniel Z. Freedman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, and

Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA

for their discovery of supergravity theory in 1976 and their major contributions in the subsequent developments of the theory. Their discovery led to an explosion of interest in quantum gravity and it transformed the subject, playing a significant role in very important developments in string theory as well as Kaluza-Klein theory. Currently any grand unified theory incorporating gravity is based on a supergravity theory coupled to matter in four dimensions, which naturally emerge from the compactifications of the ten dimensional heterotic string.