Materials researcher Nicola Spaldin wins the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics

30 June 2022

Photo: Daniel Rihs

Hamburg, 30 June 2022. British scientist Nicola Spaldin is to receive the 2022 Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. Currently serving as Professor of Materials Theory at ETH Zurich, Spaldin is a trailblazer in the development of a new class of materials known as multiferroics. The prestigious award will be presented to Spaldin on 9 November 2022 in Hamburg and will be conferred jointly by the Joachim Herz Foundation, the Wolfgang Pauli Centre of DESY and Universität Hamburg, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY and the Clusters of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter” and “Quantum Universe” at Universität Hamburg.

Multiferroics are materials that can be both permanently magnetised and electrically polarised. These physical properties almost never co-exist in nature. Nicola Spaldin’s theoretical analyses have paved the way for the production of tailor-made ferromagnetic and ferroelectric crystals. This unusual combination could allow for the building of ultra-fast data repositories and supersensitive sensors. The versatile magnetoelectric materials also promise further ground-breaking applications: in computers, for example, by eliminating the need to physically separate the electrical processing of information in the processor and its magnetic storage on hard drives. This would ensure a higher processing power and lower power consumption, leading experts to hope that multiferroic materials could be useful in beyond-silicon microelectronic devices.

“This year, we are honouring Nicola Spaldin, a scientist whose work spanning over 20 years has been the impetus behind global multiferroics research. In presenting her with this award, we acknowledge her impressive pioneering achievements, but also her diverse range of activities in the areas of international collaboration and teaching”, says Sabine Kunst, Chairwoman of the Executive Board of the Joachim Herz Foundation.

The Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics has been honouring the work of internationally renowned researchers since 2010. Nicola Spaldin is the first woman to win the accolade since its inception. The prize is one of the highest-endowed scientific awards for physics in Germany, with prize money totalling 137,036 euros – this figure being an allusion to Sommerfeld's fine structure constant, which plays an important role in theoretical physics.

Inspiring top-class research in Hamburg

The physics prize being awarded to Nicola Spaldin also includes a research residency in Hamburg. “Nicola Spaldin’s leading expertise in the theory-based design of multifunctional materials is closely linked to the core research areas of our Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld, e. g. in the working groups at Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, the CFEL and the European XFEL. In addition, her ideas on the simulation of Higgs bosons or cosmic strings in novel materials also have the potential to form an exciting bridge into particle physics at DESY and Universität Hamburg. We are very much looking forward to working with her,” says Volker Schomerus, principal investigator at the cluster of excellence "Quantum Universe", lead scientist at DESY and spokesperson for the Wolfgang Pauli Centre.

About Nicola Spaldin

Nicola Spaldin (born 1969) studied chemistry and geology at the University of Cambridge and showed an interest in the intersection between physics, chemistry and materials research from an early stage. After completing her PhD at the University of California/Berkeley in 1996, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University/New Haven before serving as Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor at the University of California/Santa Barbara. She subsequently became a Full Professor at the same institution in 2006. She has been Professor of Materials Theory in the Department of Materials at ETH Zürich since 2011.