Zurek awarded Albert Einstein Professorship Prize

LANL quantum theorist to serve as visiting professor at the University of Ulm

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, July 30, 2010—Wojciech Zurek of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Theoretical Division has been awarded the Albert Einstein Professorship Prize by the Foundation of the University of Ulm in Germany.

Zurek was recognized for his outstanding scientific achievements in the foundations of quantum theory and the relation between the quantum and classical physics that were among Albert Einstein's research interests. The prize, which is equivalent to a chaired professorship, is a visiting professorship at the University of Ulm. Zurek will spend approximately three months each year, over the course of five years, at the University.

The Albert Einstein Prize honors Ulm's connection with Albert Einstein, who was born in the city in 1879. The visiting professorship is patterned after the Humboldt Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The University of Ulm was founded as a university of medicine and natural sciences in 1967, and it is an important link to the research-oriented Science City of Ulm.

Zurek began his affiliation with LANL in 1984 as a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow. He was leader of the Lab's Theoretical Astrophysics Group from 1991 to 1996, when he was named a Laboratory Fellow. Zurek served as a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute, where he founded the Complexity, Entropy, and Physics of Information network. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he co-organized the Quantum Coherence and Decoherence, and Quantum Computing and Chaos programs. A recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize and the Marian Smoluchowski Medal of the Polish Physical Society, Zurek also is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a former Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Lecturer. He has authored more than 200 papers, which have approximately 1,000 citations.