Dirac prize is awarded to inflation pioneers
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, has awarded this year's Dirac Medal and Prize to Alan Guth of MIT, Andrei Linde of Stanford and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton for the development of cosmological inflation. While the possibility of an exponential expansion of the early universe had been noted before, it was Guth who first realized that inflation would solve some of the major problems confronting Big Bang cosmology. Difficulties with the original inflationary model were recognized from the start, and were overcome with the introduction of "new" inflation by Linde, Steinhardt and Andreas Albrecht, a student of Steinhardt's. Linde went on to propose other promising versions of inflationary theory, such as chaotic inflation. Guth and Steinhardt, among others, showed that inflation leads to a spectrum of density perturbations that can seed galaxy formation and explain the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.
Although not yet firmly established, the idea of inflation has had notable observational successes, and has become the paradigm for fundamental studies in cosmology. Its greatest success has been in accounting for the existence of inhomogeneities in the universe and predicting their spectrum.
Veneziano joins French Academy
CERN's Gabriele Veneziano was among 24 new foreign associates received into France's Academy of Science at a ceremony under the Institut de France's famous Coupole in June. Head of CERN's theoretical physics division from 1994 to 1997, Veneziano is already a member of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei. He is best known for starting the string theory ball rolling with his 1968 description of the strong force in which fundamental particles behave as strings rather than points. In the physics section of the Academy, Veneziano shared the honour with MIT's Daniel Kleppner.
US physicist Richard L Garwin has been awarded the French Academy of Science's Grand Medal for 2002. A student of Enrico Fermi in Chicago, Garwin has led a distinguished career touching many aspects of science and its impact on society. In 1960, he led the landmark muon magnetism (g-2) experiment at CERN, one of the young laboratory's first major achievements. He also studied liquid and solid helium using nuclear magnetic resonance, and was granted a key patent in the application of this technique to medical use.
His contributions to areas as diverse as high-speed laser printing, superconducting computing, satellites and arms control have been described by Nobel prize-winner Georges Charpak as "examples of the work of a highly talented scientist who also applies his talents to the resolution of society's problems with a remarkable independence of spirit". Garwin is a member of the US Academy of Science, the Academy of Engineering and the National Institute of Medicine. He is the recipient of numerous prizes both for his scientific work and his contributions to peace.
At the same session, the academy awarded its Jaffé prize to Ioanis Giomataris, a physicist working at the French Atomic Energy Commission's Saclay research centre. This prize recognizes Giomataris's work on detectors, in particular the micromegas device which he invented with Charpak. A novel gas-filled tracking device, micromegas is competitive with silicon and has been used in a number of experiments including COMPASS at CERN. The award ceremony will take place under the Coupole of the Institut de France in Paris in November.
