Ramamurti Shankar has been chosen as the 2009 winner of the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize. The award honors outstanding contributions to physics by an individual who also has exceptional skills in lecturing to diverse audiences.
Presented by the American Physical Society (APS), the annual prize consists of $10,000. Professor Shankar will receive the award at the APS meeting on 16 March 2009 in Pittsburgh, PA.
Shankar is the author of the Springer books Principles of Quantum Mechanics and Basic Training in Mathematics.
The APS citation recognizes Shankar "for his innovative applications of field theoretic techniques to quantum condensed matter systems, and his marvelous presentations of the story of physics through teaching, lectures, textbooks and public talks."
Shankar is the John Randolph Huffman Professor of Physics at Yale University. According to colleagues at Yale, Shankar is a legendary teacher and public speaker who has the ability to humorously and enthusiastically explain physics to anyone at any level.
Students collect his quotes and have compiled a list of their favorites, for example: "This is a very important day. You can forget your birthday, forget anniversaries, but you need to remember this day, because this is the day that you will learn Newton's Laws."
Past recipients of the Lilienfeld Prize include Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek.
The video of his Physics 200 course is available free online at http://oyc.yale.edu/physics/fundamentals-of-physics/