Pines Honored with Bardeen Prize

David Pines, research professor of physics and professor emeritus of physics and electrical and computer engineering in the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, has been awarded the 2009 John Bardeen Prize for Superconductivity Theory for his ground-breaking work in elucidating the phonon-mediated pairing of electrons in conventional superconductors and superfluidity in nuclear matter.

"David Pines is one of the most recognized members of our community," said Professor of Physics Philip Phillips at the award presentation. "His work on the electron-phonon interaction that underlies BCS and his application of the BCS paradigm to nuclei and neutron stars stands out as exemplary of the spirit of this award."

The John Bardeen Prize, which recognizes theoretical work that has provided significant insights on the nature of superconductivity and has led to verifiable predictions, is awarded triennially by the international superconductivity research community. University of Illinois faculty member and Nobel Laureate Anthony J. Leggett received the prize in 1994. Other winners include Alexander Andreev (Kapitza Institute, Moscow), Douglas Scalapino (University of California, Santa Barbara), and David Nelson (Harvard).

David Pines received his PhD in physics from Princeton in 1950. After holding junior faculty and research positions at Pennsylvania, Illinois, Princeton, the Niels Bohr Institute, the École Normale Supérieure, and the Institute for Advanced Study, he became a professor of physics and electrical engineering at the University of Illinois in 1959; there he served as the founding director of the Center for Advanced Study from 1967 to 1970, and a Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics from 1978 until he retired from the teaching faculty and became a Center for Advanced Study professor emeritus and research professor of physics in 1995.

Before assuming his present positions as founding co-director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (1999 to present) and Distinguished Professor of Physics, University of California, Davis (2005 to present), Pines was a professeur associe, Université de Paris. (1962–1963), a visiting professor at Nordita (1970), Lorentz Professor, University of Leiden (1971), Fairchild Professor, Caltech (1977–1978), a visiting professor at the Collège de France (1989), and a visiting fellow commoner at Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2000).

The author of four books, Pines served as editor of Reviews of Modern Physics from 1973 to 1997, and since 1961, he has served as founding editor of the Benjamin/AddisonWesley/Perseus/Westview series, Frontiers in Physics, in which some 103 volumes have appeared.

Pines has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Feenberg Medal, the Friemann, Dirac, and Drucker Prizes, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He served on the Science Policy Committee of the Obama campaign and currently serves as honorary trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics and as a member of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute and the Board of Overseers of Sabanci University, Istanbul.

Pines received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of St. Andrews in 2009 in recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics and international scientific cooperation. His current research is focused on emergent behavior in quantum matter.

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Writer/Contact: Celia Elliott, director of external affairs and special projects, Department of Physics, 217/244-7725.
Photo: Ernst Brandt. 

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.