Following the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award Guidance and Instructions, the Executive Council of Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award has approved to present the award to three laureates after strict procedures of nomination and selection. They are

Professor Rainer Weiss, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for his seminal invention of the laser interferometer gravitational-wave detector that became the foundation for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), for the initial analysis of the detector’s major noise sources, and for his subsequent leadership in LIGO’s instrumentation science research, which made the detectors sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves for the first time in human history.

Professor Kip Stephen Thorne, California Institute of Technology, for having the vision to build the scientific case for LIGO, for creating research programs that modeled gravitational waves emitted by astrophysical processes and developed data analysis methods, and for his contribution to LIGO instrumentation science, in particular the formulation of fundamental concepts in the theory of quantum metrology.

Professor Barry Clark Barish, California Institute of Technology, former director of the LIGO project, for his leadership in the construction and initial operations of LIGO, the creation of the international LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and for the successful conversion of LIGO from small science executed by a few research groups into big science that involved large collaborations and major infrastructures, which eventually enabled gravitational-wave detection.

The ceremony of 2017 Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award will be hold on December 17, 2017, Shanghai, China. The Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award was jointly founded by Fudan University and Zhongzhi Enterprise Group in 2015 in recognition of the global scientists who have made fundamental and distinguished achievements in the fields of Biomedicine, Physics and Mathematics. The 2017 Award is the second award which shall be awarded to scientists in the field of Physics. Each laureate shall receive a certificate of merit, trophy, and shares a monetary award of 3 million RMB donated by Zhongzhi Enterprise Group.

The Executive Council of Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award

July 23, 2017