Giorgio Parisi awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021

In November 2021, our colleague and so dear friend Giorgio Parisi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”. We have been all waiting impatiently for this moment for years and it has finally arrived.

We are all so happy for you, Giorgio! Congratulations!

Prof. Giorgio Parisi was born in Rome, in August 4th,1948. Under the supervision of Prof. NicolaCabbibo, he graduated from La Sapienza University in 1970. He worked as outstanding researcher atLaboratori Nazionali di Frascati (1971-1981), at the Columbia University, New York (1973-1974), at the Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (1976-1977) and at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris (1977-1978). After that period, he became full professor at University of Rome in 1981, being full professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Roma II, Tor Vergata (1981-1992). Nowadays he is full Professor at the department of Physics at the University of Rome La Sapienza.

Giorgio has widely contributed to many different fields as in the elementary particles field, non-equilibrium statistical physics, theory of phase transitions and statistical mechanics, mathematical physics and string theory, disordered systems (spin glasses and complex systems), supercomputers and very large-scale simulations of QCD (the APE project), neural networks or theoretical immunology. He has collaborated with hundreds of researchers around the whole world and has written hundreds of scientific articles as well as given many inspiring conferences and priceless seminars.

Prof. Parisi has been awarded many times during his life. Below, a list of his honors and awards:

  • 1986. Feltrinelli Prize (“Premi Antonio Feltrinelli”). 
  • 1992. Boltzmann Medal.
  • 1999. Dirac Medal of the ICTP.
  • 2002. Enrico Fermi Prize.
  • 2005
    • Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics.
    • Nonino Prize.
  • 2007. Microsoft Award.
  • 2009. Lagrange Prize.
  • 2011. Max Planck Medal.
  • 2013. Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science – Italy.
  • 2015. High Energy and Particle Physics Prize – EPS HEPP Prize.
  • 2016. Lars Onsager Prize.
  • 2018. Pomeranchuk Prize.
  • 2019. Honorary Doctorate in Science, the University of Extremadura (Spain).
  • 2021
    • Wolf Prize.
    • Inserted in Clarivate Citation Laureates.
    • Feltrinelli Prize (“Premi Antonio Feltrinelli”). 
    • Nobel Prize in Physics.
  • 2022. Honorary Doctorate in Science,  Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid (Spain).
  • 2023. Honorary Doctorate in Science,  Complutense University, Madrid (Spain).

After Guglielmo Marconi (1909), Enrico Fermi (1938), Emilio Segré (1959), Carlo Rubbia (1984) and Riccardo Giacconi (2002), Prof. Parisi (2021) is the sixth Italian scientist who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Jointly with Prof. Syukuro Manabe (Princeton University, USA) and Prof. Klaus Hasselmann (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany), half of the award went to Parisi “for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered and random phenomena”, “his theoretical solutions to a vast array of problems in the theory of complex systems” and “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”

Giorgio’s Nobel Prize lecture, on Wednesday 8th , December 2021:

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