Two Physicists Claim Share of Dutch Science Prize

In February, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) will honor the four recipients of the 2003 NWO/Spinoza Prize, the most prestigious Dutch award for science. During the ceremony in The Hague, each of the awardees will receive both a statuette and ¢1.5 million (about $1.7 million) to use for research.

Cees Dekker, professor of molecular biophysics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is being recognized in particular for his work on carbon nanotubes. According to the NWO, Dekker and his group “were the first in the world to measure the electrical conductivity of a single molecule … [and] developed the first nanotransistor, which was based on a nanotube.” His most recent work is in the emerging field of nanobiophysics.

Robbert Dijkgraaf will receive the prize for his contributions to mathematics as well as for his work on string theory. His contributions include mathematical concepts important to physics, such as the Dijkgraaf-Witten invariants and the Witten-Dijkgraaf-Verlinde-Verlinde equations. Dijkgraaf was a doctoral student of Gerard’t Hooft, a 1995 winner of the NWO/Spinoza Prize; that makes Dijkgraaf the first Spinoza laureate to have studied under a Spinoza winner. He is a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Amsterdam.