Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Leonard Susskind
Stanford University

Citation:

"For his pioneering contributions to hadronic string models, lattice gauge theories, quantum chromodynamics, and dynamical symmetry breaking."

Background:

Dr. Susskind received his BS degree in Physics from the City College of New York in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1965. Following a year of postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley, he has held the position of Professor of Physics at the Belfer Graduate School of Science in New York, Tel Aviv University in Israel, and is currently Professor of Physics at Stanford University.

In his own view, Dr. Susskind states his most important research contributions have been:

  • 1968: The development of the light cone frame as a tool for the study of relativistic quantum mechanics.
  • 1969: The discovery of string theory.
  • 1972-73: The development of theories of quark confinement.
  • 1972: The theory of the breakdown of scaling in deep inelastic electroproduction
  • 1974: The development of Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory.
  • 1980: Independent discovery of Sakharov's theory of baryogenesis.
  • 1983-87: Introduction of string theory into the quantum theory of black holes.
  • 1996: The discovery of Matrix Theory as a nonperturbative starting point for string theory.

Dr. Susskind is a recipient of the Pregel Award from the New York Academy of Science, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


Selection Committee:

William J Marciano (Chair), Jeffrey A Harvey, William A Bardeen ('96 Recipient), Robert N Cahn (Vice Chair), Glennys R Farrar