Reporter 27/4/00: Philosophical Society

Philosophical Society

WILLIAM HOPKINS PRIZE

The William Hopkins Prize of the Cambridge Philosophical Society has been awarded to Professor Paul Townsend, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Professor Townsend has made important contributions to the original formulation of supergravity, which is a generalization of general relativity that unifies bosons and fermions. He subsequently originated many of the most significant ideas in the theory of the solitons of supergravity theories, known as supermembranes, and elucidated the significance of these objects in the underlying structure of string theory. Of particular importance was his development in 1994 of nonperturbative duality symmetries in string theory that led to a unified understanding of all superstring theories together with supergravity. This has transformed the study of string theory and led to its generalization, known as 'M theory'.

The Prize, which was founded in 1867, is awarded every three years for the best original work in mathematico-physical or mathematico-experimental science by a past or present member of the University of Cambridge. The first four prize winners were Sir George Stokes, J. Clerk Maxwell, Lord Rayleigh, and Lord Kelvin.

The Council of the Philosophical Society give notice that two General Meetings of the Society will be held at 4.45 p.m. on Monday, 15 May and Monday, 17 July, in the Henslow Room, Scientific Periodicals Library, Arts School, for the purpose of electing Fellows.

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