Lorentz medal

The Lorentz medal award was established by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary (11 December 1925) of the doctorate of the theoretical physicist H.A. Lorentz. The medal is awarded once every four years to a scientist in recognition of important contributions to theoretical physics.*

Lorentz medallists

2022

Daan Frenkel

award ceremony and interviews (1) and (2)

2018

Juan M. Maldacena

award ceremony and interview

2014

Michael Berry

award ceremony

2010

Edward Witten

award ceremony and video portrait

2006

Leo P. Kadanoff

award ceremony and interview

2002

Frank Wilczek

award ceremony and interview

1998

Carl E. Wieman
& Eric A. Cornell

 

1994

Alexander M. Polyakov

 

1990

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

laudation (English)

1986

Gerard 't Hooft

 

1982

Anatole Abragam

 

1978

Nicolaas Bloembergen

laudation (Dutch)

1974

John H. van Vleck

laudation (English)

1970

George E. Uhlenbeck

laudation (Dutch)

1966

Freeman J. Dyson

laudation (English)

1962

Rudolf E. Peierls

laudation (English)

1958

Lars Onsager

laudation (English)

1953

Fritz London

laudation (English)

1947

Hendrik A. Kramers

laudation (Dutch)

1939

Arnold Sommerfeld

laudation (German)

1935

Peter Debije

laudation (Dutch)

1931

Wolfgang Pauli

laudation (German)

1927

Max Planck

laudation (German)

picture gallery

read Hendrik Casimir's reminiscence of the 1931 award ceremony
* The list of recipients contains a few experimentalists (Wieman & Cornell in 1998 and Bloembergen in 1978). The regulations were changed after 1998 from "a prize in honor of H.A. Lorentz" to "a prize for ground-breaking research in theoretical physics".