CAP Medal and Award Winners

The 2023 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Yanqin Wu, University of Toronto, in recognition of her outstanding and impactful contributions to our understanding of the evolution of planets and planetary systems.

The 2022 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

David London, Université de Montréal, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the theory of elementary particles, including trailblazing contributions to the analysis of B meson decays and CP violation in the Standard Model of particle physics.

The 2021 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Robert Raussendorf, University of British Columbia, in recognition of to recognize his eminent contributions to the theory of quantum computing, including groundbreaking work on measurement-based or "one way" quantum computing, fault-tolerant quantum computing, and computationally universal quantum phases of matter.

The 2023 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics was deferred this year.

The 2019 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Jaume Gomis, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in recognition of for his broad range of important contributions to string theory and strongly coupled gauge theories, including the pioneering use of nonlocal observables, the exact computation of physical quantities in quantum field theory, and the unravelling of the nonperturbative dynamics of gauge theories.

The 2018 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Ariel Zhitnitsky, University of British Columbia, in recognition of for his ground-breaking contributions to theoretical high energy physics, in particular for his development of the ``invisible axion" model, and for his work on the vacuum structure of non-Abelian gauge theories.

The 2017 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Raymond Laflamme, Institute for Quantum Computing/University of Waterloo, in recognition of for his ground-breaking contributions on quantum information.

The 2016 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Freddy Cachazo, Perimeter Institute, in recognition of for introducing elegant new mathematical ideas and methods that have led to unexpected insights in the way scattering amplitudes are calculated in Supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Inspired in part by twistor-string theory, the Cachazo-Svrcek-Witten (CSW) and Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) recursion relations revolutionized the field, making it possible to perform previously impossible calculations analytically in a few lines using explicit integral formulae. These results turned out to be in remarkable correspondence with structures explored concurrently by mathematicians for completely different purposes, establishing a suggestive link with the modern theory of integrable systems.

The 2015 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Charles Gale, McGill University, in recognition of for his distinguished original research contributions to three areas of theoretical nuclear physics: the determination of the equation of state from medium energy heavy ion collisions, the use of photons, lepton pairs and jets as probes of the hot and dense matter formed in high energy heavy ion collisions, and the implementation of a state-of-the-art computer code for 3+1 dimensional second-order viscous relativistic fluid dynamics for heavy ion collisions.

The 2014 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Mark Van Raamsdonk, University of British Columbia, in recognition of for his highly original, influential contributions to several areas of theoretical physics, including string theory, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. Highlights include advances in the theory of D-branes and other non-perturbative objects in string theory, the ultraviolet-infrared mixing in non-commutative quantum field theory, and the deconfinement transition in gauge theory, as well as his novel proposal that the emergence of spacetime is profoundly connected with quantum entanglement.

The 2012 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Luc Vinet, University of Montreal, in recognition of for his outstanding and continued contributions to mathematical physics, mainly based on the study of symmetries, algebraic structures, and special functions.

The 2011 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Robert Brandenberger, McGill University, in recognition of for his pioneering contributions in the area of theoretical cosmology especially the interplay of particle physics and cosmology.

The 2010 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Clifford Burgess, McMaster University/Perimeter Institute, in recognition of for his prolific and influential work in theoretical physics, which covers many different topics ranging from condensed matter theory to particle physics and string theory. Professor Burgess made seminal contributions in all these fields, but his most widely recognized contributions are in the areas of string and brane cosmology, where he developed interesting and pathbreaking ideas about how strings or branes can generate inflation in the early universe.

The 2009 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Hong Guo, McGill University, in recognition of for his pioneering work on the ab initio theory of transport in nanoscale systems, including the theory of circuits in which current flows through molecules.

The 2008 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics is awarded to

Richard Cleve, University of Waterloo, in recognition of for fundamental results in quantum information theory, including the structure of quantum algorithms and the foundations of quantum communication complexity.