The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physica ...

(IOP) accompanied by a prize of £1,000. 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 Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the great ...

. The first medal was awarded in 2008 to

Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger (; born 20 May 1945) is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Qua ...

, having been announced in 2007. It gained national recognition in the UK in 2013 when it was awarded for technology that could lead to an 'invisibility cloak'. By 2018 it was recognised internationally as the highest honour from the IOP.

Recipients

* 2021 -

David Deutsch David Elieser Deutsch ( ; born 18 May 1953) is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of ...

for "founding the discipline named

quantum computation Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

and establishing quantum computation's fundamental idea, now known as the ‘

qubit In quantum computing, a qubit () or quantum bit is a basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classic binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. A qubit is a two-state (or two-level) quantum-mechanical system, ...

’ or quantum bit." * 2020 -

Nader Engheta Nader Engheta ( fa, نادر انقطاع) (born 1955 in Tehran) is an Iranian- American scientist. He has made pioneering contributions to the fields of metamaterials, transformation optics, plasmonic optics, nanophotonics, graphene photonics, ...

for "groundbreaking innovation and transformative contributions to

electromagnetic In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...

complex materials Complex commonly refers to: * Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe ** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with eac ...

and nanoscale optics, and for pioneering development of the fields of near-zero-index metamaterials, and material-inspired analogue computation and optical nanocircuitry". * 2019 - Sir

Michael Pepper Sir Michael Pepper (born 10 August 1942) is a British physicist notable for his work in semiconductor nanostructures. Early life Pepper was born on 10 August 1942 to Morris and Ruby Pepper. He was educated at St Marylebone Grammar School, a g ...

for "the creation of the field of semiconductor nanoelectronics and discovery of new quantum phenomena" * 2018 -

Paul Corkum Paul Bruce Corkum (born October 30, 1943) is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science., as published in '' Physics in Canada'', 65(2) 58. He holds a joint University of Ottawa– NRC chair in Attosecond Photoni ...

for "his outstanding contributions to

experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and ...

" * 2017 –

Charles L. Bennett Charles L. Bennett (born November 1956) is an American observational astrophysicist. He is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He is t ...

for his "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". * 2016 –

Tom Kibble Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble (; 23 December 1932 – 2 June 2016) was a British theoretical physicist, senior research investigator at the Blackett Laboratory and Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. His ...

(posthumously) for his "outstanding lifelong commitment to

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

". * 2015 –

Eli Yablonovitch Eli Yablonovitch (born 15 December 1946) is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987.M.Kapoor (2013Electromagnetic Band Gap Structures page 58 He and his team were the first t ...

for his "visionary and foundational contributions to photonic nanostructures". * 2014 – Deborah S. Jin for "pioneering the field of quantum-degenerate Fermi gases". * 2013 –

John Pendry Sir John Brian Pendry, (born 4 July 1943) is an English theoretical physicist known for his research into refractive indices and creation of the first practical "Invisibility, Invisibility Cloak". He is a professor of theoretical solid state ph ...

for his “seminal contributions to

surface science Surface science is the study of physical and chemical phenomena that occur at the interface of two phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid–gas interfaces, solid–vacuum interfaces, and liquid–gas interfaces. It includes the fiel ...

, disordered systems and

photonics Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Though ...

”. * 2012 –

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, ...

for his outstanding contributions to relativistic astrophysics and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

. * 2011 –

Leo Kadanoff Leo Philip Kadanoff (January 14, 1937 – October 26, 2015) was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics (emeritus from 2004) at the University of Chicago and a former President of the American Physical Society (APS). He contributed t ...

for "inventing conceptual tools that reveal the deep implications of

scale invariance In physics, mathematics and statistics, scale invariance is a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energy, or other variables, are multiplied by a common factor, and thus represent a universality. The technical term ...

on the behavior of

phase transitions In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of ...

and

dynamical systems In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a p ...

." * 2010 –

Edward Witten Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, q ...

for "his many profound contributions that have transformed areas of

particle theory Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and b ...

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...

and

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

." * 2009 –

Alan Guth Alan Harvey Guth (; born February 27, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Guth has researched elementary particle theory (and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe). He is Victor Weisskopf Professor of ...

for "his invention of the

inflationary universe In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularit ...

model, his recognition that inflation would solve major problems confronting then-standard

, and his calculation, with others, of the spectrum of density fluctuations that gave rise to structure in the universe". * 2008 –

for "his pioneering conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of

quantum physics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...

, which have become the cornerstone for the rapidly-evolving field of

quantum information Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both th ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Newton Medal, Institute of Physics Awards of the Institute of Physics Physics awards Isaac Newton

Recipients

See also

References

External links