The quantum physicist Hannes Pichler and the science historian Michael Schober will be awarded the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize and the Bader Prize.
Vienna (OTS) – From the secrets of quantum physics to the enablement and disallowance of academic careers in the development of mass spectrometry: this year’s award winners Michael Schober and Hannes Pichler are setting standards in their fields. The prizes are worth $36,000 each and will be awarded on May 8th at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna.
Discovery of quantum many-body scars
Hannes Pichler, Professor of Theoretical Quantum Optics at the University of Innsbruck and research group leader at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the ÖAW, will receive the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize for his groundbreaking work in the field of quantum many-body physics and quantum information science. He developed innovative algorithms for Rydberg atom-based quantum simulators and formulated fundamental principles of chiral quantum optics.
Pichler’s research enables the control and manipulation of quantum mechanical systems using light and has led to groundbreaking findings about artificial quantum matter and, among other things, the discovery of quantum many-body scars – a quantum mechanical effect that underlies the counterintuitive, periodic behavior of many-body systems. In addition, new methods have been developed to solve classical optimization problems using neutral atoms, and new protocols for fundamental quantum gates have been designed, which form the basis of modern designs of quantum processors with neutral atoms.
Development of mass spectrometry in the Nazi era
Michael Schober from the Montanuniversität Leoben receives the Bader Prize for his dissertation project “Richard Herzog (1911–1999): the scientific career of an Austrian inventor in the field of mass spectrometry”. His work is dedicated to the biographical examination of Richard Herzog’s life, political activity and scientific career in the context of his time.
In the interwar period, a research group was founded at the University of Vienna that focused on the development of new mass spectrometers. This group was influenced by Josef Mattauch, Richard Herzog and Hugo Bondy. While Mattauch was considered an established and recognized researcher, Bondy was unable to continue his research in 1938 due to his Jewish origins and lost his job. Herzog’s scientific work on mass spectrometers, ion and electron optics as well as the beginnings of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) continues to influence research today. However, his political activity during Austrofascism and National Socialism is largely unknown.
About the Ignaz L. Lieben and Bader Prizes
The Ignaz L. Lieben Prize of the ÖAW was founded in 1863 and named after the founders of the Lieben Bank. Renowned researchers such as the physicists Marietta Blau and Lise Meitner or the two Nobel Prize winners Viktor Hess and Otto Loewi were awarded this prize. After the “Anschluss” in 1938, the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize was discontinued. The members of the founding family were expelled by the National Socialists. Heinrich Lieben, who signed the last donor letter in 1937, was murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.
Alfred Bader, born in Vienna in 1924, had to flee to England from the National Socialists in 1938 as part of the Kindertransport campaign. Together with his wife Isabel Bader, he reactivated the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize, which was awarded again in 2004 after a long interruption. Alfred Bader, who would have turned 100 this year, will also be remembered at the celebratory award ceremony at the ÖAW.
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Questions & Contact:
Sven Hartwig
Head of Public & Communications
Austrian Academy of Sciences
T +43 1 51581-1331, sven.hartwig@oeaw.ac.at
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