Altarelli and Parisi given prestigious physics awards
The European Physical Society would like to congratulate Guido Altarelli and Giorgo Parisi, who have recently been presented with prestigious awards for their work in the field of physics.
Altarelli – alongside Tornbjorn Sjøstrand and Bryan Webber – is one of the recipients of the 2012 J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, which is given by the American Physical Society. He is being presented the award for his “key ideas leading to the detailed confirmation of the Standard Model of particle physics, enabling high energy experiments to extract precise information about quantum chromodynamics, electroweak interactions and possible new physics.”
The prize – one of the most prestigious in physics – is given annually in recognition of outstanding achievement in particle theory. It consists of a certificate, a trip to the society meeting at which the award is presented and 10,000 USD in prize money. The awarded is named after J.J. Sakurai, the noted Japanese-American physicist.
Altarelli, of the Universita di Roma Tre, is the author of over 200 research papers and was also awarded, earlier this year, the 2011 Julius Wess Award for Outstanding Achievements in Elementary Particle and Astroparticle Physics, by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Giorgo Parisi, of the Sapienza Università di Roma, has received the Ecole Normale Superieure’s ‘Prix des trois Physiciens’, in commemoration of both his research in theoretical physics, and his time in France – where he is highly regarded by his former students and has formed strong ties with the French scientific community.
The award, given annually, honours the memories of Henri Abraham, Eugene Bloch and Georges Bruhat – the three physicists of the title, who founded the physics department at the Ecole Normale Superieure before disappearing in Nazi concentration camps between 1943 and 1944.
Parisi is also noted to have been the recipient of the 1992 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics’s Boltzmann Medal, the 1999 Dirac Medal and Prize, the 2002 Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society and, most recently, the 2011 Max Planck Medal of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.
