Juan Maldacena Receives 2018 Prange Prize

Juan Maldacena, Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Richard E. Prange Prize and Lectureship in Condensed Matter Theory and Related Areas.

The prize recognizes Maldacena’s 1997 theoretical discovery of a deep connection between gauge theories, which describe the world of particle physics at the microscopic scale, and quantum gravity, which describes the physics of gravitational forces holding the universe together. Known as AdS/CFT duality, it is one of the most actively studied topics in theoretical physics with more than 10,000 citations, making it among the most-cited papers in all of science over the last two decades.

Maldacena’s Prange Prize lecture "Black Holes and the Structure of Spacetime” will be given at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 2, at the University of Maryland and is open to the public. He will also present a Condensed Matter Theory Center/Joint Quantum Institute seminar “Wormholes and Entangled States” on Monday, October 1.

The Prange Prize, established by the UMD Department of Physics and Condensed Matter Theory Center honors the late Professor Richard E. Prange, who was a former Member in the School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences from 1960­–61 and went on to a distinguished professorial career at the University of Maryland spanning four decades from 1961–2000, with a focus on exploring condensed matter physics.

Since its initiation in 2009, the Prange Prize has been awarded to former IAS Visitor Walter Kohn, former Member David Gross, and former Professor Frank Wilczek, along with other noted academics, Philip W. Anderson, Daniel Tsui, Andre Geim, and Klaus von Klitzing.

Read more about the award from the University of Maryland.