The Max Planck medal is the highest award of the

German Physical Society The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. The DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 60,547, as of 2019, making it the largest physics society in the world. It holds an annual conference () and multiple ...

, the world's largest organization of physicists, for extraordinary achievements in

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

. The prize has been awarded annually since 1929, with few exceptions, and usually to a single person. The winner is awarded with a gold medal and hand-written parchment. In 1943 it was not possible to manufacture the gold medal because the

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

foundry was hit by a bomb. The board of directors of the German Physical Society decided to manufacture the medals in a substitute metal and to deliver the gold medals later. The highest award of the German Physical Society for outstanding results in experimental physics is the

Stern–Gerlach Medal The Stern–Gerlach Medal is the most prestigious German Award for experimental physicists, named after the scientists of the Stern–Gerlach experiment, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach. The prize, awarded annually since 1993, is awarded by the De ...

List of recipients

*2023

Rashid A. Sunyaev Rashid Alievich Sunyaev ( tt-Cyrl, Рәшит Гали улы Сөнәев, russian: Раши́д Али́евич Сюня́ев; born 1 March 1943 in Tashkent, USSR) is a German, Soviet, and Russian astrophysicist of Tatar descent. He got his ...

*2022

Annette Zippelius Annette Zippelius (born 25 June 1949) is a German physicist at the University of Göttingen. In 1998 she became a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winner. Her research focuses on complex fluids and soft matter – materials that are intermediate b ...

*2021 Alexander Markovich Polyakov *2020

Andrzej Buras Andrzej Jerzy Buras (Polish pronunciation: ; born 26 October 1946 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish-born Danish theoretical physicist, professor emeritus at the Technical University Munich (TUM). Scientific career He received his master's degree ...

*2019

Detlef Lohse Detlef Lohse (born 15 September 1963 in Hamburg) is a German physicist and professor in the University of Twente's Department of Physics of Fluids in the Netherlands. Biography Lohse studied at the University of Kiel and University of Bonn, gr ...

*2018

Juan Ignacio Cirac Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born 11 October 1965), known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He is the recipient of the 2006 Pr ...

*2017

Herbert Spohn Herbert Spohn (born 1 November 1946) is a German mathematician and mathematical physicist working in kinetic equations; dynamics of stochastic particle systems, hydrodynamic limit; kinetic of growths processes; disordered systems; open quantum sy ...

*2016 Herbert Wagner *2015

Viatcheslav Mukhanov Viatcheslav Fyodorovich Mukhanov (russian: Вячесла́в Фёдорович Муха́нов; born October 2, 1956) is a Soviet/Russian born German theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He is best known for the theory of Quantum Origin of t ...

*2014

David Ruelle David Pierre Ruelle (; born 20 August 1935) is a Belgian mathematical physicist, naturalized French. He has worked on statistical physics and dynamical systems. With Floris Takens, Ruelle coined the term '' strange attractor'', and developed a ...

*2013

Werner Nahm Werner Nahm (; born 21 March 1949) is a German theoretical physicist, with the status of professor. He has made contributions to mathematical physics and fundamental theoretical physics. Life and work Werner Nahm attended Gymnasium Philipp ...

*2012

Martin Zirnbauer Martin R. Zirnbauer (born 25 April 1958) is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cologne. Zirnbauer studied at the Technical University of Munich and Oxford University, where he earned his PhD. In 1987 he was appointed at age 2 ...

*2011

Giorgio Parisi Giorgio Parisi (born 4 August 1948) is an Italian theoretical physicist, whose research has focused on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics and complex systems. His best known contributions are the QCD evolution equations for parton densit ...

*2010 Dieter Vollhardt *2009 Robert Graham *2008

Detlev Buchholz Detlev Buchholz (born 31 May 1944) is a German theoretical physicist. He investigates quantum field theory, especially in the axiomatic framework of algebraic quantum field theory. Biography Buchholz studied physics in Hannover and Hamburg wher ...

*2007

Joel Lebowitz Joel Louis Lebowitz (born May 10, 1930) is a mathematical physicist widely acknowledged for his outstanding contributions to statistical physics, statistical mechanics and many other fields of Mathematics and Physics. Lebowitz has published m ...

*2006

Wolfgang Götze Wolfgang Götze (born 11 July 1937 – 20 October 2021) was a German theoretical physicist. He began his physics education at Humboldt University of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin, after which he obtained his doctorate at the Technical ...

*2005

Peter Zoller Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

*2004

Klaus Hepp Klaus Hepp (born 11 December 1936) is a German-born Swiss theoretical physicist working mainly in quantum field theory. Hepp studied mathematics and physics at Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität in Münster and at the Eidgenössischen Technis ...

*2003

Martin Gutzwiller Martin may refer to: Places * Martin City (disambiguation) * Martin County (disambiguation) * Martin Township (disambiguation) Antarctica * Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land * Port Martin, Adelie Land * Point Martin, South Orkney Islands Austral ...

*2002

Jürgen Ehlers Jürgen Ehlers (; 29 December 1929 – 20 May 2008) was a German physicist who contributed to the understanding of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. From graduate and postgraduate work in Pascual Jordan's relativity research group ...

*2001

Jürg Fröhlich Jürg Martin Fröhlich (born 4 July 1946 in Schaffhausen) is a Swiss mathematician and theoretical physicist. He is best known for introducing rigorous techniques for the analysis of statistical mechanics models, in particular continuous symmetry ...

*2000

Martin Lüscher Martin Lüscher (born August 3, 1949, in Bern) is a Swiss theoretical physicist, who works primarily on numerical quantum chromodynamics (lattice field theory). Lüscher studied at the University of Bern and the University of Hamburg, where he ea ...

*1999

Pierre Hohenberg Pierre C. Hohenberg (3 October 1934 – 15 December 2017) was a French-American theoretical physicist, who worked primarily on statistical mechanics. Hohenberg studied at Harvard, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1956 and a master's degr ...

*1998

Raymond Stora Raymond Félix Stora (18 September 1930 – 20 July 2015) was a French theoretical physicist. He was a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), as well as a member of CERN's theory group. His work focused ...

*1997

Gerald E. Brown Gerald Edward Brown (born July 22, 1926 in Brookings, South Dakota; † May 31, 2013 in New York City) was an American theoretical physicist who worked on nuclear physics and astrophysics. Since 1968 he had been a professor at the Stony Brook Un ...

*1996

Ludvig Faddeev Ludvig Dmitrievich Faddeev (also ''Ludwig Dmitriyevich''; russian: Лю́двиг Дми́триевич Фадде́ев; 23 March 1934 – 26 February 2017) was a Soviet and Russian mathematical physicist. He is known for the discovery of the ...

*1995

Siegfried Grossmann Siegfried Grossmann (born 28 February 1930) is a German theoretical physicist who has been awarded the Max Planck Medal, the major prize for achievements in theoretical physics. Biography He was born near Königsberg in Prussia (now Kaliningrad ...

*1994 Hans-Jürgen Borchers *1993

Kurt Binder Kurt Binder (10 February 1944 – 27 September 2022) was an Austrian theoretical physicist. He received his Ph.D. in 1969 at the Technical University of Vienna, and his habilitation degree 1973 at the Technical University of Munich. He decided t ...

*1992

Elliott H. Lieb Elliott Hershel Lieb (born July 31, 1932) is an American mathematical physics#Mathematically rigorous physics, mathematical physicist and professor of mathematics and physics at Princeton University who specializes in statistical mechanics, Cond ...

*1991 Wolfhart Zimmermann *1990

Hermann Haken Hermann Haken (born 12 July 1927) is physicist and professor emeritus in theoretical physics at the University of Stuttgart. He is known as the founder of synergetics. He is a cousin of the mathematician Wolfgang Haken, who proved the Four ...

*1989

Bruno Zumino Bruno Zumino (28 April 1923 − 21 June 2014) was an Italian theoretical physicist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained his DSc degree from the University of Rome in 1945. He was renowned for his rigorous p ...

*1988

Valentine Bargmann Valentine "Valya" Bargmann (April 6, 1908 – July 20, 1989) was a German-American mathematician and theoretical physicist. Biography Born in Berlin, Germany, to a German Jewish family, Bargmann studied there from 1925 to 1933. After the National ...

*1987

Julius Wess Julius Erich Wess (5 December 19348 August 2007) was an Austrian theoretical physicist noted as the co-inventor of the Wess–Zumino model and Wess–Zumino–Witten model in the field of supersymmetry and conformal field theory. He was also a ...

*1986

Franz Wegner Franz Joachim Wegner (born 15 June 1940) is emeritus professor for theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg. Education Franz Wegner attained a doctorate in 1968 with thesis advisor Wilhelm Brenig at the Technical University Munich with ...

*1985

Yoichiro Nambu was a Japanese-American physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery in 1960 of the mechanism ...

*1984

Res Jost Res Jost (10 January 1918 – 3 October 1990) was a Swiss theoretical physicist, who worked mainly in constructive quantum field theory. Biography Res Jost was born on January 10, 1918, in Bern. He is the son of the physics teacher Wilhelm ...

*1983

Nicholas Kemmer Nicholas Kemmer (7 December 1911 – 21 October 1998) was a Russian-born nuclear physicist working in Britain, who played an integral and leading edge role in United Kingdom's nuclear programme, and was known as a mentor of Abdus Salam – a N ...

*1982 Hans-Arwed Weidenmüller *1981

Kurt Symanzik Kurt Symanzik (November 23, 1923 – October 25, 1983) was a German physicist working in quantum field theory. Life Symanzik was born in Lyck (Ełk), East Prussia, and spent his childhood in Königsberg. He started studying physics in 1946 a ...

*1980 ''not awarded'' *1979

Markus Fierz Markus Eduard Fierz (20 June 1912 – 20 June 2006) was a Swiss physicist, particularly remembered for his formulation of spin–statistics theorem, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, particle physics, and statistic ...

*1978

Paul Peter Ewald Paul Peter Ewald, FRS (January 23, 1888 in Berlin, Germany – August 22, 1985 in Ithaca, New York) was a German crystallographer and physicist, a pioneer of X-ray diffraction methods. Education Ewald received his early education in the clas ...

*1977

Walter Thirring Walter Thirring (29 April 1927 – 19 August 2014) was an Austrian physicist after whom the Thirring model in quantum field theory is named. He was the son of the physicist Hans Thirring.Thirring, H. Über die Wirkung rotierender ferner Massen ...

*1976

Ernst Stueckelberg Ernst Carl Gerlach Stueckelberg (baptised as Johann Melchior Ernst Karl Gerlach Stückelberg, full name after 1911: Baron Ernst Carl Gerlach Stueckelberg von Breidenbach zu Breidenstein und Melsbach; 1 February 1905 – 4 September 1984) was a S ...

*1975

Gregor Wentzel Gregor Wentzel (17 February 1898 – 12 August 1978) was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926. In his early ...

*1974

Léon Van Hove Léon Charles Prudent Van Hove (10 February 1924 – 2 September 1990) was a Belgian physicist and a Director General of CERN. He developed a scientific career spanning mathematics, solid state physics, elementary particle and nuclear physics t ...

*1973

Nikolay Bogolyubov Nikolay Nikolayevich Bogolyubov (russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Боголю́бов; 21 August 1909 – 13 February 1992), also transliterated as Bogoliubov and Bogolubov, was a Soviet and Russian mathematician and theoretic ...

*1972

Herbert Fröhlich Herbert Fröhlich (9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991) FRS was a German-born British physicist. Career In 1927, Fröhlich entered Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich to study physics, and received his doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld ...

*1971 ''not awarded'' *1970

Rudolf Haag Rudolf Haag (17 August 1922 – 5 January 2016) was a German theoretical physicist, who mainly dealt with fundamental questions of quantum field theory. He was one of the founders of the modern formulation of quantum field theory and he identifi ...

*1969

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum m ...

*1968

Walter Heitler Walter Heinrich Heitler (; 2 January 1904 – 15 November 1981) was a German physicist who made contributions to quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory. He brought chemistry under quantum mechanics through his theory of valence bond ...

*1967

Harry Lehmann Harry Lehmann (21 March 1924 in Güstrow22 November 1998 in Hamburg) was a German physicist. Biography Lehmann studied physics at Rostock and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 1952 he worked at the Max-Planck-Institut in Göttingen, and ...

*1966 Gerhart Lüders *1965 ''not awarded'' *1964

Samuel Goudsmit Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (July 11, 1902 – December 4, 1978) was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925. Life and career Goudsmit was born in The Hague, Nethe ...

and

George Uhlenbeck George Eugene Uhlenbeck (December 6, 1900 – October 31, 1988) was a Dutch-American theoretical physicist. Background and education George Uhlenbeck was the son of Eugenius and Anne Beeger Uhlenbeck. He attended the Hogere Burgerschool (High S ...

*1963

Rudolf Peierls Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, (; ; 5 June 1907 – 19 September 1995) was a German-born British physicist who played a major role in Tube Alloys, Britain's nuclear weapon programme, as well as the subsequent Manhattan Project, the combined Allied ...

*1962

Ralph Kronig Ralph Kronig (10 March 1904 – 16 November 1995) was a German physicist. He is noted for the discovery of particle spin and for his theory of X-ray absorption spectroscopy. His theories include the Kronig–Penney model, the Coster–Kronig tran ...

*1961

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his con ...

*1960

Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (russian: Лев Дави́дович Ланда́у; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet- Azerbaijani physicist of Jewish descent who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. His a ...

*1959 Oskar Klein *1958

Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics fo ...

*1957

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under ...

*1956

Victor Weisskopf Victor Frederick "Viki" Weisskopf (also spelled Viktor; September 19, 1908 – April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Niels Boh ...

*1955

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel ...

*1954

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...

*1953

Walther Bothe Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (; 8 January 1891 – 8 February 1957) was a German nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born. In 1913, he joined the newly created Laboratory for Radioactivity at the Reich Physi ...

*1952

Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Univer ...

*1951

James Franck James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate i ...

and

Gustav Hertz Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Biography Hertz was born in Hamb ...

*1950

Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye (; ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, D ...

*1949

Lise Meitner Elise Meitner ( , ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on rad ...

and

Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner ...

*1948

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...

*1945–1947 ''not awarded'' *1944

Walther Kossel Walther Ludwig Julius Kossel (4 January 1888 – 22 May 1956) was a German physicist known for his theory of the chemical bond (ionic bond/octet rule), Sommerfeld–Kossel displacement law of atomic spectra, the Kossel-Stranski model for crysta ...

*1943

Friedrich Hund Friedrich Hermann Hund (4 February 1896 – 31 March 1997) was a German physicist from Karlsruhe known for his work on atoms and molecules. Scientific career Hund worked at the Universities of Rostock, Leipzig, Jena, Frankfurt am Main, and Göt ...

*1942

Pascual Jordan Ernst Pascual Jordan (; 18 October 1902 – 31 July 1980) was a German theoretical and mathematical physicist who made significant contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. He contributed much to the mathematical form of matri ...

*1939–1941 ''not awarded'' *1938

Louis de Broglie Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie (, also , or ; 15 August 1892 – 19 March 1987) was a French physicist and aristocrat who made groundbreaking contributions to Old quantum theory, quantum theory. In his 1924 PhD thesis, he pos ...

*1937

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...

*1934–1936 ''not awarded'' *1933

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series ...

*1932

Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. In addition to his scientific endeavors with cont ...

*1931

Arnold Sommerfeld Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld, (; 5 December 1868 – 26 April 1951) was a German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, and also educated and mentored many students for the new era of theoretica ...

*1930

Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...

*1929

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Planck Medal Awards of the German Physical Society Awards established in 1929 1929 establishments in Germany

List of recipients

See also

References

External links