News Release

Scientist becomes first Briton to win Feenberg Memorial Medal

Grant and Award Announcement

University of Manchester

A University of Manchester scientist has become the first Briton to be awarded the prestigious Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal in Many-Body Physics.

The medal, which is widely regarded as an indicator for future Nobel Prize winners, has been jointly awarded to Professor Raymond Bishop, of the University of Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy, and Hermann Kümmel, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany.

Established in 1983, the Medal has never before been awarded to a scientist in Great Britain. Two of the nine previous winners, Anthony J Leggett and Walter Kohn, have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, for Physics and Chemistry respectively.

Professor Bishop has been awarded the Medal for his pioneering development of the 'Coupled-Cluster Method' – a powerful theoretical technique used to understand the properties of materials in terms of their fundamental constituents.

In 1978 he published his first paper on the application of the method to the so-called electron gas, a model used to describe the properties of metals. His results for that model, which was then the best studied of all quantum many-body problems, have never been bettered. Based on that initial success he has gone on to develop the method further and to apply it equally successfully to a huge variety of other fundamental problems in many branches of physics. The method is now also very widely used by many other scientists around the world throughout the fields of chemistry, physics and materials science.

Professor Bishop said: "It is a humbling experience and indeed a very high honour to be awarded what is the premier prize in the field of many-body physics. It is also a particular pleasure to share the award with one of my dearest friends in the field, Hermann Kümmel."

He believes the method may in the future be applied, for example, to the fledgling field of quantum pharmacology, enabling new drugs to be designed solely by using such first-principles theoretical techniques as the coupled-cluster method.

Professor Bishop is cited for his "development of the coupled-cluster method toward a comprehensive ab initio approach, and innovative applications across the full spectrum of subfields of quantum many-body physics."

The award will be presented at the 13th International Conference on Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 5-9 December 2005.

###

For further information:

Simon Hunter, Media Relations Officer, telephone: 0161 2758387 or email: simon.hunter@manchester.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

Professor Raymond Bishop is Professor of Physics within the School of Physics and Astronomy, which is part of the University of Manchester's Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Raymond Bishop online biog: http://www.fit.edu/fip/ray_bishop.htm

The Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal was established in 1983 by the international many-body physics community in memory of the unique and enduring contributions of Eugene Feenberg to many-body physics.

Many-body physics is concerned with understanding the properties of matter in terms of the interactions between the microscopic (atomic and subatomic) constituents of matter. As such it applies to many broad sub-disciplines of physics, chemistry, and materials science. Feenberg was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; a short biography may be found in the NAS archives at:
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/efeenberg.html

Past recipients have included David Pines (1985), John W. Clark (1987), Malvin H. Kalos (1989), Walter Kohn (1991, 1998 Nobel laureate), David M. Ceperley (1994), Lev P. Pitaevskii (1997), Anthony J. Leggett (1999, 2003 Nobel laureate), Philippe Nozières (2001), Spartak T. Belyaev and Lev P. Gor'kov (2004).

For further information: http://qmbt13.df.uba.ar/laureates.html, http://www.qmbt.org/index.php?doc=BishopKuemmel, and http://www.qmbt.org/index.php?doc=Feenberg


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.