Lev Pitaevskii – – professor of the University of Trento now retired – and Sandro Stringari – full professor of theoretical physics at the Physics Department of the University of Trento – have been awarded the senior BEC Prize.
The prize is awarded every other year to scientists who have distinguished themselves by their contribution to quantum gas physics.
The awarding ceremony was held on 11 September in Saint Feliu de Guixols, in Spain, within the BEC2019, a conference on Bose Einstein Condensation.
This is the major international conference in the field of quantum gases, which has been held every other year since 1993, when it was first organized in Levico Terme.
Just two years later, in 1995, the first Bose-Einstein condensation was experimentally achieved, an event that was central to other extraordinary developments in atomic physics.
About 200 scientists from all over the world attended this year's conference, including three Nobel prize laureates: Eric Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and William Phillips, who have also visited the University of Trento several times in the past years.
This is the justification for the award: for the key role they have played, with both their individual works and their collaborative ones, on our understanding of Bose-Einstein condensates and Fermi gases. Their theoretical contributions have been essential for guiding a wide range of experimental investigations in this domain.
The committee that awards the prize consists of prominent scientists and this year was chaired by professor Thierry Giamarchi of the University of Geneve.