Alexander Polyakov receives his award at a ceremony hosted by Morgan Freeman (Image: Harold Cunningham/Getty)

It’s beautiful physics, but it probably won’t earn anyone a Nobel prize. String theory has yet to make observable predictions, and thus it cannot be experimentally tested – making it unlikely to be considered for that honour.

Now big-value awards are being given out to people who work on fundamental physics, and a leader in string theory has walked away with this year’s grand prize of $3 million.

On 20 March, Alexander Polyakov of Princeton University took home the 2013 Fundamental Physics prize for his contributions to quantum field theory and string theory, including what are now considered classic descriptions of magnetic monopoles.


These hypothetical particles would act like magnets that each have only one magnetic pole. So far hunts for magnetic monopoles suggest that if they exist, they are so rare that we may never find them. But the search could lead us to a better understanding of the basic forces in the universe, such as electromagnetism, and maybe even to a unified “theory of everything”.

The Fundamental Physics prize was launched by billionaire internet investor Yuri Milner last July to highlight these kinds of theoretical advancements. This year’s awards were presented at a ceremony at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.

“Fundamental physics underlies almost every aspect of modern life, but does not get the recognition it deserves,” said CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer at the ceremony.

Hawking and Higgs

Four other physicists received the 2013 Physics Frontiers prize of $300,000 each: Charles Kane, Laurens Molenkamp and Shoucheng Zhang were honoured for their theoretical prediction and experimental discovery of topological insulators; and Joseph Polchinski for contributions to quantum field theory and string theory. All four will be automatically nominated for the main Fundamental Physics prize for the next five years.

The ceremony also included acceptance speeches by the winners of the 2012 prize, which gifted $3 million each to nine physicists. Two special prizes announced in December went to Stephen Hawking, for his voluminous work on black holes, and to the leaders of the teams at CERN that discovered the Higgs boson.

In his acceptance speech, Hawking thanked Milner for recognising theoretical work. Hawking’s theory that black holes are not totally black but emit particles now known as Hawking radiation is widely accepted, but challenging to prove. The larger a black hole is, the dimmer it glows and the harder the radiation is to detect. “I hope that the prizes will bring further recognition to some of the most brilliant minds in the world and the great accomplishments they have produced,” Milner said.