UC Santa Barbara professor awarded prestigious 2008 Dirac Medal

Joseph Polchinski in his UC Santa Barbara office. Click here for more information.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) – Joseph Polchinski, a professor of physics and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, has been awarded the 2008 Dirac Medal, one of the world's most prestigious prizes in physics.

Polchinski is one of three scientists to share the 2008 award, which was announced by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. Polchinski will travel to Trieste in March 2009 to accept the medal and cash prize. Also receiving the Dirac Medal will be Juan M. Maldacena, of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and Cumrun Vafa, of Harvard University.

Polchinski was stunned when he received the news. In fact, he wasn't even aware that he had been nominated for the award. "It's completely unexpected," he said during an interview in his office. "The more I learn about the award, the more I'm honored.

"The person the award is named for (Paul A.M. Dirac) is one of the great figures in science," Polchinski said. "He was one of the people who discovered quantum mechanics in the 1920s. He's also an inspiration for somebody like me because he was one of a handful who kept doing great work into his 50s and even his 60s. He was still identifying important questions that other people weren't even thinking about, whose implications are still coming out today. I think very highly of Dirac."

While Polchinski, Maldacena, and Vafa share the award, their research was done individually, with a nod to how each influenced the others.