Tom Kibble receives the Dirac Medal for Higgs theory

by Simon Levey

09 August 2013

Imperial's Tom Kibble is one of three scientists celebrated with an award named after Paul Dirac, 'one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century'

The prizes were announced yesterday by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy. First awarded in 1985, the Dirac Medal is given to scientists who have made significant contributions to theoretical physics and carry a prize worth $5000 for each awardee.

The Dirac Medal of the ICTP

An eminent theoretical physicist, Emeritus Professor Tom Kibble CBE FRS has received this award for work in the 1960's that led to the concept of a mass-giving particle now known as the Higgs boson, and proved a key feature of the standard model of particle physics.

He shares the 2013 Dirac Medal with two other world-leading physicists whose combined work has deepened our understanding of the universe: Martin Rees, the Cambridge astrophysicist who holds a Visiting professorship at Imperial as well as the honorary position of Astronomer Royal. He is best known for research into black holes and the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies.

Also honoured is Jim Peebles, a cosmologist at Princeton University in the USA who pioneered work on the Cosmic Microwave Background, radiation emanating from the Big Bang.

Professor Kibble said: "It is always very gratifying to have one's work recognized by other physicists. This award is particularly special for me because of its association with my former colleague and inspiration, Abdus Salam, who founded the ICTP, and also because the other medallists this year are two astronomers for whose work I have the greatest respect, James Peebles and Martin Rees. To be listed alongside them is a real honour."

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born in Bristol, England on 8 August 1902. Among his many achievements was his prediction in the 1920's that anti-matter exists, which was subsequently confirmed in experiments.

Dirac shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Erwin Schrödinger in 1933, for bringing together the seemingly opposing ideas of relativity theory and quantum theory. He held the Lucasian Chair at the University of Cambridge, a position occupied by Sir Isaac Newton two centuries earlier.

The Dirac Medal was proposed by fellow Nobel physicist, the late Abdus Salam, who had been Dirac's student at Cambridge. Salam went on to found the Theoretical Physics Group at Imperial and then later the ICTP. It was purportedly after having listened to Dirac's lectures that he decided to devote his life to research rather than becoming a civil servant in his country, Pakistan.

The Dirac Medal is not awarded to Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, or Wolf Prize winners. However, several Dirac Medallists have subsequently won one of these awards: Yoichiro Nambu (2008), David Gross (2004), Frank Wilczek (2004), Martinus Veltman (1999).

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