'Cosmic Inflation' Pioneers Snag Prestigious Kavli Prize
Three physicists who helped further the theory that the universe expanded rapidly right after it was born were awarded the prestigious Kavli Prize in Astrophysics today (May 29).
Alan Guth of MIT, Andrei Linde of Stanford University and Alexei Starobinsky of the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Russia shared the prize for their work on the theory of cosmic inflation, which posits that the universe underwent a period of rapid expansion in the first few moments after the Big Bang.
Guth proposed a model of cosmic inflation in 1980, and Starobinsky independently helped develop the idea. Linde later proposed a version of the theory known as chaotic inflation. In March, a team of researchers announced they had detected gravitational ripples left over from the Big Bang, which, if confirmed, would be inflation's "smoking gun."
The prize in nanoscience was awarded to Thomas Ebbesen, of the University of Strasbourg in France; Stefan Hell, of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany; and Sir John Pendry, of the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, for their pioneering research in nano-optics that have enabled researchers to magnify and see incredibly small structures.
The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience was awarded to Brenda Milner, of McGill University in Canada; John O’Keefe, of University College London in the U.K.; and Marcus Raichle, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis "for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition."
