ICTP has awarded its 2014 Dirac Medal to Ashoke Sen (India), Andrew Strominger (USA) and Gabriele Veneziano (Italy), three physicists who have made crucial contributions to the origin, development and further understanding of string theory.
Ashoke Sen is a professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) in Allahabad, India, whose research on black holes and the symmetries of string theory have been highly influential in the field. He has a long affiliation with ICTP, having won the centre's ICTP Prize in 1989 and currently serving on ICTP's Scientific Council.
Andrew Strominger, a professor of physics at Harvard University, USA, has been a major figure in uncovering geometric solutions of string theory and has made important contributions to the understanding of black holes in quantum gravity.
Gabriele Veneziano, of CERN, Switzerland and Collège de France, France, published research in 1968 that marks the clear beginning of string theory and has made numerous contributions to theoretical physics.
