APS News

2014 Kavli Prizes go to APS Members

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

May 30, 2014

2014 Kavli Prize Winners

Astrophysics Kavli Astrophysics Prize Winners

Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Alexei Starobinsky

Nanoscience Kavli Nanoscience Prize Winners

Stefan Hell, John Pendry, Thomas Ebbesen

Gray arrow About the Kavli Prize

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 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 hyper expansion 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 the Imperial College of 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 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.