Prize Recipient

Shlomo Havlin
Bar-Ilan University

Citation:

"For his most generous sharing of good ideas with Ph.D. students and young colleagues from 30 countries that has enabled them to achieve important discoveries and develop into highly successful scientists."

Background:

Born July 21, 1942 in Jerusalem, Israel; M. Sc. Tel-Aviv University, 1970; Ph.D. Bar-IIan University, 1972. Professor of Physics, Bar-IIan University, 1984-present. Chairman, Department of Physics, 1984-1988; Dean, Faculty of Exact Sciences, 1999-2001; President, Israel Physical Society, 1996-1999; Director, Minerva Center for Mesoscopics, Fractals and Neural Networks, 1998-present; Fellow, Americal Physical Society, 1995; Fellow, Institute of Physics, England, 2000; Excellence National Center Award, Israel Science Foundation, 2004; Honorary Professor, hefei University of Science and Technology, China, 2003; Prize for best scientific papeer for the public, Minister of Science, Israel, 2002; Minerva Center Award, Germany, 1993; Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, Germany, 1992; Landau Prize for Outstanding Research, 1988; Lord Marks Fellowship Award, England, 1979. Havlin has made in his extensive and caring cooperation with hundreds graduate students and young scientists from more than 30 countries, fundamental contributions to the physics of complex systems. Together with his young collaborators he contributed also to fields such as medicine, biology, geophysics, and computer science. Specific achievements include: developing the theory of anomalous diffusion in percolation; developing the first model for photon migration in biological tissues which led to medical diagnostic procedure using optical imaging; introducing of the concept and applications of the shortest path in disordered media; developing the law governing the territory covered by N-diffusing species; discovering long-range correlations in non-coding DNA sequences; discovering self-stratification in granular mixtures; discovering a universal persistence law governing atmospheric variability; discovering multifractality in heartbeat dynamics; discovering different scaling for healthy and diseased heartbeat fluctuations; developing the first theory for the stability of complex networks such as the Internet; developing the theory for an optimal path through a network; finding the "ultra-small-world" property of complex networks; and developing tools that show many networks, such as protein networks, have a fractual topology. His papers, are highly cited, with 20 papers cited more than 100 times.

Selection Committee:

Robert Merlino (Chair), Denis McWhan, Padma Kant Shukla ('05 recipient), John Risley