Back

The Dirac Medal

ICTP's Dirac Medal, first awarded in 1985, 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, 8 August, to scientists who have made significant contributions to theoretical physics.

An international committee of distinguished scientists (Alessandra Buonanno, Atish Dabholkar (chair), Michael Green, David Gross, Juan Maldacena, Giorgio Parisi, Subir Sachdev) selects the winners from a list of nominated candidates. 

 

In honor of

P.A.M. Dirac

One of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and a staunch friend of ICTP

The Dirac Medal image

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born in Bristol, England on 8 August 1902. He studied engineering in his hometown, and obtained his degree in physics and mathematics at Cambridge University where in 1932 he became Professor of Mathematics in the Lucasian Chair, which had been held by Sir Isaac Newton two centuries earlier. After his retirement, Professor Dirac went to live in Tallahassee, Florida, where he taught at Florida State University from 1971 until his death on 20 October 1984.

A Member of the Royal Society since 1930, he won the Royal Medal in 1939 and the Copley Medal in 1952. Professor Dirac shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with E. Schrödinger in 1933. He invented the well-known relativistic wave equation predicting the existence of spin and of the positron when he was only 23 years old. His further work includes his formulations of quantum field theory, statistics of fields and particles, gravitational waves and the prediction of magnetic monopoles.

Dirac first came to Trieste in June 1968 on the occasion of the International Symposium on Contemporary Physics at which he delivered a lecture on the methods of theoretical physics. After this symposium, Dirac was a guest of honour at the Centre for a month or so nearly every year. In 1972, at a symposium on The Physicists's Conception of Nature organised in honour of Dirac on the occasion of his 70th birthday, he gave a lecture on Fundamental Constants and their Development in Time. Dirac also attended the Marcel Grossman Meeting held at the Centre on the centennial of the birth of Albert Einstein in 1979.

Abdus Salam, who proposed the institution of the Dirac Medal, was Dirac's student at Cambridge and it was after having listened to Dirac's lectures that he decided to devote his life to research rather than becoming a civil servant in his country. He remained in touch with his master and became his friend.

Nomination

Nominations can be submitted online. One or more scientists can be nominated. Information including name, address, institute, email etc. are required in the online nomination form (for both the nominator and the nominee); the nominee's short CV, short list of publications, and reference/support letters are also required and can be uploaded in pdf format. A citation is also requested. 

The Dirac Medal is not awarded to Nobel Laureates, Fields Medallists, or Wolf Foundation Prize winners, although many Dirac Medallists have proceeded to win these prestigious prizes. The full list of past winners, including their award citations, is available below.

For further information, please write to director@ictp.it.

The Awardees

2024
Horacio Casini, Marina Huerta, Shinsei Ryu, Tadashi Takayanagi
2023
Jeffrey Harvey, Igor Klebanov, Stephen Shenker, Leonard Susskind
2022
Joel L. Lebowitz, Elliott H. Lieb, David P. Ruelle
2021
Alessandra Buonanno , Thibault Damour , Frans Pretorius , Saul Teukolsky
2020
André Neveu , Pierre Ramond , Miguel Virasoro
2019
Viatcheslav Mukhanov , Alexei Starobinsky , Rashid Sunyaev
2018
Subir Sachdev , Dam Thanh Son , Xiao-Gang Wen
2017
Charles H. Bennett , David Deutsch , Peter W. Shor
2016
Nathan Seiberg , Mikhail Shifman , Arkady Vainshtein
2015
Alexei Kitaev , Gregory W. Moore , Nicholas Read
2014
Ashoke Sen , Andrew Strominger , Gabriele Veneziano
2013
Thomas W.B. Kibble , Phillip James E. Peebles , Martin John Rees
2012
F. Duncan M. Haldane , Charles L. Kane , Shoucheng Zhang
2011
Edouard Brezin , John Cardy , Alexander Zamolodchikov
2010
Nicola Cabibbo , Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan
2009
Roberto Car , Michele Parrinello
2008
Juan Martín Maldacena , Joseph Polchinski , Cumrun Vafa
2007
John Iliopoulos , Luciano Maiani
2005
Sir Samuel Frederick Edwards , Patrick A. Lee
2004
James D. Bjorken , Curtis G. Callan
2003
Robert H. Kraichnan , Vladimir E. Zakharov
2002
Alan Guth , Andrei Linde , Paul Steinhardt
2001
John J. Hopfield
2000
Howard Georgi , Jogesh Pati , Helen Quinn
1999
Giorgio Parisi
1998
Stephen L. Adler , Roman Jackiw
1997
Peter Goddard , David Olive
1996
Tullio Regge , Martinus J.G. Veltman
1993
Sergio Ferrara , Daniel Z. Freedman , Peter van Nieuwenhuizen
1992
Nikolai N. Bogolubov , Yakov G. Sinai
1991
Stanley Mandelstam , Jeffrey Goldstone
1990
Ludwig D. Faddeev , Sidney R. Coleman
1989
John H. Schwarz , Michael B. Green
1988
David J. Gross , Efim S. Fradkin
1987
Bruno Zumino , Bryce DeWitt
1986
Yoichiro Nambu , Alexander Polyakov
1985
Yakov Zeldovich , Edward Witten