The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics (IOP) accompanied by a prize of £1,000. The award is given to a physicist, regardless of subject area, background or nationality, for outstanding contributions to physics. The award winner is invited to give a lecture at the institute. It is named in honour of Sir Isaac Newton. The award is recognized as the most prestigious award of the IOP.
The first medal was awarded in 2008 to Anton Zeilinger, having been announced in 2007. It gained national recognition in the UK in 2013 when it was awarded for technology that could lead to an 'invisibility cloak'. By 2018 it was recognised internationally as the highest honour from the IOP. In 2020, a citation study identified it as one of the five most prestigious prizes in physics, ranking third.
Recipients +YearNameRationale (for)2008Anton Zeilinger"his pioneering conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, which have become the cornerstone for the rapidly-evolving field of quantum information"2009Alan Guth"his invention of the inflationary universe model, his recognition that inflation would solve major problems confronting then-standard cosmology, and his calculation, with others, of the spectrum of density fluctuations that gave rise to structure in the universe"2010Edward Witten"his many profound contributions that have transformed areas of particle theory, quantum field theory and general relativity"2011Leo Kadanoff"inventing conceptual tools that reveal the deep implications of scale invariance on the behavior of phase transitions and dynamical systems"2012Martin Reeshis outstanding contributions to relativistic astrophysics and cosmology2013John Pendry“seminal contributions to surface science, disordered systems and photonics”2014Deborah S. Jin"pioneering the field of quantum-degenerate Fermi gases"2015Eli Yablonovitch"visionary and foundational contributions to photonic nanostructures"2016Tom Kibble"outstanding lifelong commitment to physics" (posthumously) 30 June 20162017Charles L. Bennett"leadership of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a satellite experiment that revolutionized cosmology, transforming it from an order-of-magnitude game to a paragon of precision science"2018Paul Corkum"his outstanding contributions to experimental physics"2019Michael Pepper"the creation of the field of semiconductor nanoelectronics and discovery of new quantum phenomena"2020Nader Engheta"groundbreaking innovation and transformative contributions to electromagnetic complex materials and nanoscale optics, and for pioneering development of the fields of near-zero-index metamaterials, and material-inspired analogue computation and optical nanocircuitry"2021David Deutsch"founding the discipline named quantum computation and establishing quantum computation's fundamental idea, now known as the ‘qubit’ or quantum bit"2022Margaret Murnane"pioneering and sustained contributions to the development of ultrafast lasers and coherent X-ray sources and the use of such sources to understand the quantum nature of materials"2022 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize. iop.org2023James Binney"advancing the science of stellar dynamics and using strong physical intuition to widen and deepen our understanding of how galaxies are structured and formed."2023 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize. iop.org2024Richard Friend"for pioneering and enduring work on the fundamental electronic properties of molecular semiconductors and in their engineering development."2024 Isaac Newton Medal and Lecture. iop.org2025Michael Berry"for groundbreaking work on the geometrical Berry phase of quantum states in topological physics and seminal contributions to mathematical physics in quantum chaos, catastrophe theory and singular optics."2025 Isaac Newton Medal and Lecture. iop.org
See also University of Glasgow Isaac Newton Medal Institute of Physics Awards List of physics awards List of awards named after people
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