On 18 June 2024, the French physicist Prof. Matthieu Wyart (EPFL, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) was awarded the Physik Preis Dresden 2024. The theoretical physicist is being honoured for his pioneering contributions to various problems of complex systems, in particular the theory of financial markets, the physics of disordered and glassy systems as well as the theory of neural networks and machine learning. The Physik Preis Dresden is awarded annually jointly by the Dresden University of Technology and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS).

Matthieu Wyart completed his PhD in Paris in 2005, where he worked together with J.-P. Bouchaud. During this time, he developed a model of price response functions in electronic markets, which became a standard in the industry. In the field of physics of disordered systems, he made an important breakthrough very early on by explaining how the surplus of soft modes in closely-packed systems of particles is controlled by their disordered geometry. This work elegantly solved the long-standing problem of the origin of the so-called boson peak in glasses with repulsive interactions. As a postdoc, he moved to Harvard and then Princeton before becoming an assistant and associate professor at New York University. He has been a professor at EPF Lausanne since 2015.

In recent years, Matthieu Wyart's original approaches and way of reasoning have had a strong impact and brought new insights into the physics of disordered systems. More recently, he has made significant contributions to the problem of the nature of the glass transition. In particular, his work suggests that increasing local energy barriers control the slowing down of dynamics in supercooled liquids, as opposed to co-operative effects.

The numerous original approaches to solving problems in different fields and disciplines are testimony to his extraordinary scientific excellence. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the physics of complex and disordered systems, the Dean of the Faculty of Physics at Dresden University of Technology, Prof. Gesche Pospiech, together with Prof. Frank Jülicher, Director at the MPI-PKS, awarded the Physik Preis Dresden 2024 to Matthieu Wyart on 18 June 2024 as part of the Physics Colloquium.

About the Physik Preis Dresden

The Physik Preis Dresden, endowed with 5,000 euros, was founded in 2015 by the Dresden physicist Prof Peter Fulde (1936-2024), the founding director of the MPI-PKS, and has been awarded annually to renowned scientists since 2017. The award winners are selected by a joint commission of the Dresden University of Technology and the MPI-PKS. In addition to the central criterion of scientific excellence, it is particularly important for the decision that the work of the award winners is of particular importance for the cooperation between the two DRESDEN-concept partners MPI-PKS and TUD and that their connection has been further strengthened in the long term.

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