Abishek Dhar and Zhong Fang Win the 2008 ICTP Prize

Trieste, June 16, 2008 — The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) takes pleasure in announcing the award of the 2008 ICTP Prize in honour of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes jointly to Professor Abhishek Dhar, Theoretical Physics Group, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India, and to Professor Zhong Fang, Center for Quantum Simulation Sciences, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.

Abhishek Dhar is being honoured for “his outstanding contributions to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of transport and fluctuation phenomena, classical as well as quantum mechanical. His exact and insightful results have clarified subtle issues, and corrected several misconceptions, specially about heat conduction.”

Zhong Fang is being recognized for “his theoretical and computational work on the origin of anomalous Hall effect and for his significant contributions to the understanding of spin and orbital physics in transition metal oxides.”

The ICTP Prize was established in 1982 to recognize outstanding and original contributions of young scientists, no more than forty years of age, working in developing countries. The prize is awarded annually in honour of an eminent scientist and includes a sculpture, certificate and cash award.

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932-2007), in whose honour the 2008 ICTP Prize is being awarded, was one of the most influential theoretical physicists of his time. His work spanned a wide variety of subjects in condensed matter theory and statistical physics. He was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physics “for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymer”.

For additional information, see: http://prizes.ictp.it/prizes/Prize