Edison Volta Prize

The Edison Volta Prize is awarded by the European Physical Society for outstanding performance in physics to individuals or groups of up to three people. It was donated in 2011 by the EPS, the Centro di Cultura Scientifica "Alessandro Volta" and the Edison company and is endowed with 10,000 euros. The name is reminiscent of Alessandro Volta and Thomas Edison .

Award winners

2012 Rolf-Dieter Heuer (Director General of CERN ), Sergio Bertolucci (Director for Research and Computers at CERN), Stephen Myers (Director for Accelerators at CERN) for building on the decades-long work of their predecessors, culminating in the LHC Research led, which led to many significant advances in high energy physics, in particular the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012 (laudatory speech).
2014 Jean-Michel Raimond (University of Paris VI) for work on the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory
2015 Nazzareno Mandolesi (University of Ferrara), Jean-Loup Puget (University of Paris-South), Jan Tauber (ESA) for major contributions to the Planck Space Telescope
2016 Michel Orrit (Leiden University) for fundamental contributions to optics, to single-molecule spectroscopy (first discovery of single molecules with fluorescence and first optical detection of magnetic resonance of a single molecule) and for pioneering investigations into photo flashing and photo-bleaching behavior of individual molecules at the center of many current optical experiments very high resolution (laudation)
2018 Alain Brillet (Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur), Karsten Danzmann (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and Leibniz University Hannover), Adalberto Giazotto (INFN, posthumously), Jim Hough (University of Glasgow) for the development, in their respective countries, of key technologies and innovative experimental solutions, that enabled the advanced interferometric gravitational wave detectors LIGO and Virgo to detect the first gravitational wave signals from mergers of Black Holes and of Neutron Stars.
2020 Dieter Weiss , Jurgen Smet , Klaus Ensslin

Web links

Page of the EPS on the Edison Volta Price

References and comments

↑ for having led, building on decades of dedicated work by their predecessors, the culminating efforts in the direction, research and operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which resulted in many significant advances in high energy particle physics, in particular, the first evidence of a Higgs-like boson in July 2012
↑ for seminal contributions to optical science, to the field of single-molecule spectroscopy and imaging (first single molecule detection by fluorescence and first optical detection of magnetic resonance in single molecule) and for pioneering investigations into the photoblinking and photobleaching behaviors of individual molecules at the heart of many current optical super-resolution experiments.
↑ The EPS Edison Volta Prize 2020 is announced. In: eps.org. European Physical Society, June 18, 2020, accessed on June 22, 2020 .

[1] r having led, building on decades of dedicated work by their predecessors, the culminating efforts in the direction, research and operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which resulted in many significant advances in high energy particle physics, in particular, the first evidence of a Higgs-like boson in July 2012

[2] r seminal contributions to optical science, to the field of single-molecule spectroscopy and imaging (first single molecule detection by fluorescence and first optical detection of magnetic resonance in single molecule) and for pioneering investigations into the photoblinking and photobleaching behaviors of individual molecules at the heart of many current optical super-resolution experiments.

[3] The EPS Edison Volta Prize 2020 is announced. In: eps.org. European Physical Society, June 18, 2020, accessed on June 22, 2020 .