The optical physicist Nader Engheta has won the 2020 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize for “groundbreaking innovation and transformative contributions to electromagnetic complex materials and nanoscale optics, and for pioneering development of the fields of near-zero-index metamaterials, and material-inspired analogue computation and optical nanocircuitry”. Presented by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, the international award is given annually for “world-leading contributions to physics”.
The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize attracts an award of £1000 and is the only one of the IOP’s prizes that is open to physicists worldwide. Previous winners include Thomas Kibble, Deborah Jin and Ed Witten.
Engheta is an Iranian-American scientist based at the University of Pennsylvania. He did a BSc in electrical engineering at the University of Tehran graduating in 1978 before heading to the US and studying a MS and then PhD in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. From 1983 to 1987 he remained at Caltech before moving to the University of Pennsylvania.
He has been awarded the Newton medal and prize thanks to his work on nanoscale optics and metamaterials. Engheta has pioneered several fields in optics including unifying electronic and optics with nanocircuit elements for photons and electrons and he has led the development of phenomena such as metamaterial cloaking.
Rewarding excellence
The IOP has also announced the winners of its other awards. Among them are Myriam P Sarachik who receives the President’s Medal “for her fundamental contributions to condensed-matter physics, lifetime service to the physics community and efforts to defend the human rights of scientists and the principles of diversity and inclusion in physics”. The President’s Medal is awarded to both physicists and non-physicists who have contributed to physics in general and the IOP in particular.
Michael Pepper wins Isaac Newton Medal and Prize
“Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s IOP awards, which recognize and reward excellence in individuals and teams and their contribution to physics,” says IOP president Jonathan Flint. “We’re delighted to celebrate the winners’ extraordinary achievements.”
This year’s gala dinner to honour the awardees, which usually happens this month, has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The full list of 2020 award winners is available here.
