John Bardeen Prize
The John Bardeen Prize was established in 1991 by the organizers of the International Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (M2S) in honor of Dr. John Bardeen “for theoretical work that has provided significant insights on the nature of superconductivity and has led to verifiable predictions.” The award is sponsored by the Department of Physics of the University of Illinois and by the Friends of Bardeen. More information can be found at https://physics.illinois.edu/people/honors-and-awards/bardeen-prize
NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR THE JOHN BARDEEN PRIZE
Nomination Period: August 1, 2025 – December 1, 2025
The JOHN BARDEEN PRIZE committee is now accepting nominations for the 2026 award. The Bardeen Prize “for theoretical work that has provided significant insights on the nature of superconductivity and has led to verifiable predictions” will be presented during the M2S-HTSC Conference in Stuttgart, Germany on July 19 – 25, 2026.
Please submit nomination packets via email to ramais@illinois.edu with the subject line “2026 Bardeen Prize Nomination” by the deadline of December 1, 2025. The nomination package consists of a single pdf file combining the following documents: a nomination letter outlining the significant research of the nominee(s); the current CV(s) of the nominee(s); and up to three supporting letters. Identities of nominated candidates and nominating scientists should be kept strictly confidential. The prize committee will examine the nominations on an individual basis, including those where multiple candidates are grouped together. All nominations and nominators will be treated confidentially.
Selection Committee
Lara Benfatto (Sapienza University of Rome)
Greg Boebinger (Florida State University)
Rafael Fernandes (Chair, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Liang Fu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Peter Hirschfeld (University of Florida)
Yoshiteru Maeno (Toyota Riken – Kyoto University Research Center)
Past John Bardeen Prize Recipients
2022:
Jörg Schmalian, Mohit Randeria, and Peter Hirschfeld
presented at Vancouver, Canada, “for pioneering theoretical work that has provided significant insights on the nature of superconductivity, its realization in strongly correlated systems, and experimental probes of unconventional superconductors: to Jörg Schmalian for impactful, materials-based theoretical insights into unconventional superconductors across the periodic table including organic superconductors, cuprates, and pnictides, and for pioneering work on the effect of intertwined order as well as on a beyond-quasi-particle description of normal states for unconventional superconductivity; to Mohit Randeria for contributions to the theory of the BCS-BEC crossover, for providing theoretical understanding of angle-resolved photoemission experiments on superconducting and pseudo gap phases of the cuprate superconductors, and for providing rigorous bounds on the superconducting transition temperature in two-dimensional materials; to Peter Hirschfeld for elucidating the roles of electronic structure effects in unconventional superconductors, and for developing key insights connecting the nature of unconventional superconducting gaps to transport, penetration depth, and scanning tunneling microscopy experiments.”
2018:
Andrey V. Chubukov, Igor Mazin, and Sebastian Doniach
presented at Beijing, China “for sustained theoretical contributions to the field of unconventional and multi-orbital superconductivity and superconducting quantum fluctuations: to Andrey Chubukov for seminal contributions to the theory of unconventional superconductivity, including applications to the iron-based superconductors, to Igor Mazin for influential first-principles theoretical approaches to a broad class of multi-orbital superconductors, such as MgB2 and the iron-based compounds and to Sebastian Doniach for pioneering work on Josephson junction coupled arrays and layered superconductors, quantum fluctuations in superconductors, and the possibility of a superconductor-insulator transition.”
2015:
Vinay Ambegaokar
presented at Ithaca, NY, USA, “for his contributions to the statics, dynamics and kinetics of Josephson junctions and nanowires.”
2012:
James Avery Sauls, Chandra M. Varma, and Steven Allan Kivelson
presented at Washington, DC, USA, “for their work on unconventional superconductivity: to James Avery Sauls and Chandra M. Varma for their works on the identification of the pairing symmetry, pairing mechanism, and multiple superconducting phases in heavy-fermion superconductors, and to Steven Allan Kivelson for his works on the role of phase fluctuations and on the interplay between unconventional superconductivity and electronic inhomogeneity”
2009:
David Pines
presented at Tokyo, Japan, “for phonon-mediated pairing of electrons in conventional superconductors and superfluidity in nuclear matter”
2006:
Alexander Andreev, Kazumi Maki, and Doug Scalapino
presented at Dresden, Germany, “for their work on quasiparticles in superconductors: to A. Andreev for the prediction of Andreev scattering, to K. Maki for his work on gapless quasiparticle excitations due to pair-breaking and for elucidating the role of fluctuations and to D. Scalapino for his contributions to life time effects of quasiparticles and how strong correlations affect their properties”
2003:
Anatoly Larkin, David Nelson, and Valerii Vinokur
presented at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, “for their contributions to the theory of vortex matter”
2000:
T. Maurice Rice
presented at Houston, USA, “for the physical insight he brought to the understanding of the superconducting state in strongly correlated materials in general, and for the prediction of unconventional pairing in Sr2RuO4 in particular”
1997:
Philip W. Anderson
presented at Beijing, China, “for his contributions to the understanding of broken symmetry, the order parameter in the A and B phases of superfluid helium three and the role of impurities in metallic superconductors”
1994:
Anthony J. Leggett and G. M. Eliashberg
presented at Grenoble, France, “for the development of the pairing theory to account for the thermodynamic and dynamic properties of strong coupling superconductors”
1991:
Vitaly L. Ginzburg, Alexei A. Abrikosov, and Lev P. Gor'kov
presented at Kanazawa, Japan “for developing, in cooperation, the GLAG theory which has proved the most useful tool to investigate superconductivity phenomenologically and, further, has also been playing a vital role in the studies of the high temperature superconductors.”
About John Bardeen
John Bardeen (1908-1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.
The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, allowing the Information Age to occur, and made possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers to missiles. Bardeen’s developments in superconductivity, which won him his second Nobel, are used in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) or its medical sub-tool magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
In 1990, John Bardeen appeared on LIFE Magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential Americans of the Century.”