Module 1 · In Their Own Words
Laureate Lectures & Interviews
Each Max Planck Medal recipient delivers a Preisträgervortrag — an acceptance lecture — at the DPG annual meeting. The DPG records these lectures and accompanying short interviews on its YouTube channel. Below, organised by theme, are nine of the most recent (2008–2024).
Cosmology & Astrophysics
Rashid Sunyaev — Two Milestones in the Life of the Universe (Medal 2008)
Rashid Sunyaev co-discovered (with Yakov Zel’dovich, 1969–1972) the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect— the inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons by hot electrons in galaxy clusters, producing a frequency-dependent CMB distortion that allows the discovery and characterisation of clusters out to high redshift independent of their luminosity. He also computed the cosmological recombination spectrum (the spectral distortion of the CMB from hydrogen and helium recombination near z = 1100), now within reach of next-generation experiments.
Two Milestones in the Life of the Universe
Sunyaev surveys two key cosmological epochs: recombination at z ≈ 1100 (the freeze-out of the CMB last-scattering surface) and reionisation at z ≈ 6–10 (when the first sources lit up). Both leave imprints on the CMB that we are still extracting.
Viatcheslav Mukhanov — Interview (Medal 2015)
Viatcheslav Mukhanov is one of the principal architects of cosmological perturbation theory. With Chibisov in 1981 he showed how quantum fluctuations in an inflationary phase get amplified into the classical density perturbations from which all cosmic structure subsequently grows. The amplitude \(\Delta_\zeta \sim 10^{-5}\)and the slight red tilt \(n_s \approx 0.965\) measured by COBE, WMAP, and Planck are direct tests of these inflationary predictions.
Interview with Viatcheslav F. Mukhanov
Conversation with the 2015 Max Planck medallist on the origins of cosmological perturbation theory, the relationship between inflation and quantum mechanics, and what the next decade of CMB and large-scale structure observations might reveal.
Particle Physics
Andrzej J. Buras — News from the Flavour Expedition to the Zeptouniverse (Medal 2014)
Andrzej Buras is one of the architects of the modern theory of flavour physics — the use of CKM-matrix processes and rare kaon and B-meson decays to probe scales far above direct LHC reach. He developed (with Jamin, Lautenbacher, and others) the effective Hamiltonian framework for \(\Delta F = 1, 2\) weak decays at next-to-next-to-leading order, the basis for modern global flavour fits.
News from the Flavour Expedition to the Zeptouniverse
Buras surveys the CKM matrix, the unitarity triangle, neutral-meson mixing in K, Bₐ, Bₛ and D systems, and the rare decays K → πνν and Bₛ → μμ whose precise measurement gives sensitivity to physics at zeptometre scales (10⁻²¹ m).
Quantum Information
J. Ignacio Cirac — Interview (Medal 2018)
Ignacio Cirac (also Dirac Medal of ICTP 2006, with Peter Zoller) co-proposed the Cirac–Zoller scheme in 1995 for a scalable trapped-ion quantum computer — the foundation document of modern ion-trap QC architectures (Honeywell/Quantinuum, IonQ, Innsbruck, NIST). He has also pioneered tensor-network methods (PEPS, MERA) for the simulation of strongly correlated quantum many-body systems.
Interview with J. Ignacio Cirac
Conversation with the 2018 Max Planck medallist on the early days of quantum computing, the Cirac–Zoller proposal, the rise of tensor-network methods, and the present state of the quantum-information field.
Statistical & Mathematical Physics
Herbert Wagner — Lecture (Medal 2016)
Herbert Wagner is the “Wagner” of the Mermin–Wagner theorem (1966): continuous symmetries cannot be spontaneously broken at finite temperature in dimensions \(d \le 2\). The theorem rules out conventional ferromagnetic order in 2D Heisenberg systems, BEC in 2D bosons in the thermodynamic limit, and many other naively-expected ordered phases — with deep consequences for the quantum-Hall effect, KT transitions, and 2D materials.
Preisträgervortrag — Herbert Wagner
Wagner revisits the Mermin–Wagner theorem fifty years after the original 1966 paper: its precise statement, its proof, the role of long-wavelength fluctuations, and the modern landscape of 2D ordering phenomena that respect or evade it.
Herbert Spohn — Lecture (Medal 2017)
Herbert Spohn is a leading mathematical physicist of hydrodynamic limits and stochastic integrable systems. He proved much of the rigorous theory of the Boltzmann equation from interacting particle systems, contributed centrally to the KPZ universality class for surface growth (the Tracy–Widom distribution governs height fluctuations in TASEP, random matrices, and many other one-dimensional non-equilibrium systems), and wrote the standard text on large-scale dynamics of interacting particles.
Preisträgervortrag — Herbert Spohn
Spohn surveys his own programme: from kinetic theory and Boltzmann hydrodynamics to the modern KPZ universality class, the Tracy–Widom distribution, and the rigorous derivation of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics in 1D non-equilibrium systems.
Soft Matter & Active Systems
Detlef Lohse — Lecture & Interview (Medal 2019)
Detlef Lohse is a leading experimental and theoretical fluid dynamicist working on turbulent multiphase flows: bubble clouds, sonoluminescence (light emission from collapsing bubbles in acoustically driven liquids), Rayleigh–Bénard convection at extreme Rayleigh numbers, and microfluidics. The lecture and interview together give a tour of his programme.
Preisträgervortrag — Detlef Lohse
Lohse’s programme: ultimate-state Rayleigh–Bénard convection, single-bubble sonoluminescence, surface nanobubbles, and droplet evaporation in concentration gradients (the ‘ouzo effect’ and beyond).
Interview with Detlef Lohse
Conversation: from theoretical training under Grossmann to experimental high-Rayleigh-number turbulence in Twente, the Marie-Curie generation of fluid dynamicists, and the rise of multiphase flow as a discipline.
Erwin Frey — Lecture (Medal 2024)
Erwin Frey works on the theoretical biophysics of active matter— how living systems organise themselves out of equilibrium. Topics include evolutionary game theory and rock-paper-scissors dynamics in microbial communities, motor-protein-driven cytoskeletal pattern formation, and the statistical mechanics of self-propelled particle systems.
Emergence and Self-Organisation in Biological Systems
Frey shows how rich self-organised behaviour — pattern formation, biological clocks, evolutionary cycles, active turbulence — emerges from simple non-equilibrium rules in living matter, and how the language of statistical physics and stochastic dynamics organises these phenomena.