Congrats to Peter Zoller from the University of Innsbruck for winning the Dirac Medal from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Here is the announcement on their webpage:
Peter Zoller, professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck and scientific director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has won the Dirac Medal 2006. Zoller is being honoured for his innovative and prolific accomplishments in atomic physics, including his seminal work in proposing methods to use trapped ions for quantum computing and describing how to realize the Bose-Hubbard model and associated phase transitions in ultracold gases
I’ve even heard some experimental physicists blaspheme that the Cirac-Zoller proposal for ion trap quantum computing was as important as Peter Shor’s algorithm in getting quantum computing jumpstarted! Previous winners of the Medal include a laundry list of great theoretical physicists, including Ed Witten (in 1985), and someone who now does work in quantum computing, Jeffrey Goldstone (in 1991).
Interestingly, you are inelligible for the Dirac Medal of the ICTP if you have won a Nobel Prize, a Fields Medal, or a Wolf Prize (Witten won his Dirac Medal before he won his Fields Medal.) Just to avoid confusion this is different from the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize awarded by the Institute of Physics.
Interestingly, you are inelligible for the Dirac Medal if you have won a Nobel Prize, a Fields Medal, or a Wolf Prize
Darn, I was hoping for a Grand Slam.
I will settle for the Blacque Jacque Shellacque Medal.
Well you just have to do it in the right order!