A Chinese scientist has won America’s most prestigious physics prize since its inception 70 years ago. This is the price of the American Physical Society. He won it Xue Qikun. This honorary distinction was awarded to the Chinese last Tuesday, October 24. The prize was jointly awarded to Chinese physicists and Ashvin Vishwanath of Harvard University.
The Chinese scientist carried out his work with his university team to synthesize topological insulators for the development of next-generation low-power electronics. We note from the statements made by the company behind the price that Xue and Vishwanath were recognized for their “innovative theoretical and experimental studies of the collective electronic properties of materials that reflect the topological aspects of their band structure.”
Both scientists received the highest honor in condensed matter physics, a branch of the discipline that explores the macroscopic and microscopic properties of matter. This honorary distinction comes in a context of conflict between China and the United States. The Chinese scientist, winner of this award, is known for his notoriety in the field of science.
He has been a world-renowned researcher on topological insulators for over a decade. He had already won numerous awards for his work, among them the Future Science Prize for Physical Science in 2016 and Fritz London Memorial Award in 2020. In 2005, it joined the Chinese Academy of Sciences. That same year, he officially joined Tsinghua University, where in 2013 his team was the first to report an experimental observation of topological isolation.
The team of Xue Qikun this year it has strongly outperformed its competitors in Japan, Germany and the United States. During several interviews he granted to the Chinese press, Xue Qikun confided that he had gone through difficult periods in his career. In particular, it reported that in 1984, Xue failed the graduate program entrance examination twice before being admitted to the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
