July's turning out to be a pretty good month for physics.
Alan Guth (right)
FQXi is all abuzz at news that two of our members, inflation supremos Alan Guth (pictured right, with Alex Vilenkin) and Andrei Linde (pictured below), have been chosen to be among the first winners of the newly established Fundamental Physics Prize. There are nine recipients in total, who each pick up a hefty $3 million, thanks to the generosity of Yuri Milner, a former physics grad student who earned his fortune through investing in Internet companies. (More details--including about the contents of Guth's bank account--from the New York Times.)
You can read about some of the FQXi-funded research carried out by Guth and Linde, and watch videos of Linde's FQXi talks, below.
Congratulations too to string theorists Nima Arkani-Hamed, Juan Maldecena, Nathan Seiberg, Ed Witten, and Ashoke Sen, and also to quantum computing expert Alexei Kitaev and mathematician Maxim Kontsevich. You can read about Seiberg's work looking into how space might be emergent, in "Melting Spacetime" by Grace Stemp-Morlock.
The NYT article also notes that the prize can be awarded for work that has not yet been verified by experiment--a great move allowing us to celebrate some tremendous insights in theoretical physics. Mr. Milner, we like your style!
So who do you think should be the next recipients? Perhaps someone who has (so far) been overlooked by the Nobel committee because experiments have not yet caught up with their theories? There will also be a $100,000 prize honoring promising young researchers. Who would you nominate?
Andrei Linde
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Andrei Linde talks about the Nature of Time in Inflation and Quantum Cosmology (5 parts):
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