Mikhail Eremets of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, has been named recipient of the 2022 Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials.
The international prize was created in 1989 by friends and colleagues of Bernd T. Matthias, a German-born physicist who immigrated to the United States in 1947 and is noted for his discovery of nearly 1,000 superconducting materials. The Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston (TcSUH) has sponsored the international prize since 2000.
Eremets is being honored for his pioneering studies of superconductivity in hydrogen-rich compounds under high pressure with Tc >200 K. In recognition of the prize, he will receive US$6,000 and a special framed certificate designed by science publisher Elsevier B.V.
Eremets studied physics at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and received his Ph.D. at the Moscow Institute of General Physics Academy of Sciences. He then started his professional journey at the High-Pressure Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Russia, Troitsk, Moscow. He grew to lead the institute as the director of the High-Pressure Physics Department. From 1991 onwards, he worked in the most renowned high-pressure laboratories throughout the world: in France (University Paris 6), Japan (NIMS and Osaka University), the United States of America (Geophysical Laboratory), the United Kingdom (Clarendon Laboratory), and others. Currently, Mikhail Eremets is a staff member of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, and he leads the research group "High-pressure chemistry and physics."
"It is a great honor to be a recipient of the Bernd T. Matthias Prize. I consider this selection as a recognition of the efforts of our group on high-pressure experiments and superconductivity,” Eremets said. “It is a great pleasure to receive this prize in particular because Bernd Matthias serves me as an example of an experimentalist and scientist."
The 2022 Matthias Prize will be presented at the 13th M2S-HTSC international conference in Vancouver (British Columbia), Canada. The H. Kamerlingh Onnes Prize and the John Bardeen Prize will also be presented in a special ceremony at the conference.
2022 Matthias Prize committee members are Paul Ching-Wu Chu, chair, TcSUH; Ivan Bozovic, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Hideo Hosono, Tokyo Institute of Technology; Frank Steglich, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics; and Zhongxian Zhao, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Susan Butler of TcSUH serves as Matthias Prize coordinator.
2022 M2S-HTSC Conference co-chairs are Douglas Bonn and Mona Berciu of the University of British Columbia, Steward Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, and Andrea Damascelli is the scientific program chair.
TcSUH is the largest multidisciplinary university-based superconductivity and advanced materials research center in the U.S., with more than 220 faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate, and undergraduate students. The Center's personnel create and develop high-temperature superconducting and advanced materials, further their understanding, and develop commercial applications.
- Story by Susan Butler