2014 Kavli Prizes go to APS Members

Four APS members and an APS Prize winner were among the recipients of this year’s Kavli Prizes.

The Kavli Foundation announced awards for research into the early inflation of the universe and for pushing the resolution limits of nano-optics. The winners were named during a live online broadcast from the World Science Festival on May 29 in New York City.

Alan Guth of MIT, Andrei Linde of Stanford University and Alexei Starobinsky of the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences won for their exploration of the brief period of hyperexpansion in the very early universe. Guth previously won APS’s 1992 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize for his work on cosmic inflation, and Starobinsky is an APS fellow.

Members Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and John Pendry of Imperial College London shared the nanoscience award with Thomas Ebbesen of the Université de Strasbourg, France, for their independent work on using nanotechnology to improve the resolution of optical microscopes to less than 200 nanometers, an achievement once thought to be impossible. Pendry previously won APS’s 2013 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials.

Presented in conjunction with the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the annual awards recognize pioneering science in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. The winners in each category share a $1 million cash prize, and each receive a medal and scroll honoring their accomplishment. The Kavli Foundation was established in 2000 by a donation from entrepreneur Fred Kavli, who passed away late last year.