Physics Professors Win Prestigious Award

Physics professors Andrew E. Strominger ’77 and Cumrun Vafa were awarded the Milner Foundation’s Fundamental Physics Prize earlier this week. This $300,000 prize recognizes their achievements in theoretical physics and makes them eligible for a $3 million prize, whose winners will be announced on Dec. 12, according to Foundation representative Rob Meyer.

Strominger, director of the Harvard Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature, and Vafa were honored both for their joint publications and for their collective body of work concerning a number of challenging problems that affect our view of the universe.

“One big question is: ‘What’s a black hole?’ The problem is baffling and it’s a tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics,” said Strominger.

While they have not found the solution to this problem, Strominger asserted that they have made significant progress by using the framework of string theory. In so doing, Strominger and Vafa managed to solve a puzzle that Stephen Hawking, one of last year’s winners and a member of the prize selection committee, had posed back in the 1970s. While Hawking had made predictions, Strominger and Vafa’s work now verifies and confirms string theory as a viable explanation for some of the workings of our universe.

Princeton University physics professor Nima Arkani-Hamed, a member of the selection committee and a former Harvard faculty member, explained that this breakthrough is “a huge boost in the field… and a milestone in understanding quantum gravity.”

“I’m happy to get it,” said Strominger, who then emphasized that his work was part of a team effort.

“There is a mythology, especially in theoretical physics, that advances are largely made by a few brilliant people, and that everyone else just cleaned up the details, but it’s the opposite. It’s progress that the whole community makes together and collaborates on.”

Vafa echoed this sentiment, and explained the important role that prizes play.

“We certainly don’t do science to get approval, but it’s a great feeling to see eminent colleagues appreciate our work. It’s tremendously satisfying,” he said. “Scientists don’t work for awards, but awards allow for contact with society. If society sees [science] as exciting and useful work, more people will want to join us.”

To forge that connection, all winners give public talks on their research that will be collected into a resource for anyone interested in developments in the study of fundamental physics.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: Nov. 10, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated when the winner of the 2014 $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize will be announced. In fact, that winner will be named on Dec. 12, not next March.