The 2000 Dirac Medal has been awarded to Howard Georgi of Harvard University, Jogesh Pati of the University of Maryland, and Helen Quinn of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The medal is awarded by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics. Quinn is the first woman to win the medal in its 15-year history. The winners are always announced on Dirac's birthday - August 8.
Georgi, Pati and Quinn were honoured for their “pioneering contributions to the quest for a unified theory of quarks and leptons and the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions.” Working with Salam, Pati developed the first gauge theory version of the standard model. Working with Sheldon Glashow – who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics with Salam and Steven Weinberg – Georgi discovered many of the most significant models for the grand unification of the strong and electroweak forces. Quinn is best known for her work on charge-parity symmetry. Georgi, Quinn and Weinberg also did important work together on unification.
