Who has a 2026 John Bardeen Prize, a 2026 Anatoly Larkin Award, and has been known to frequent the halls of Pupin? Professor Andrew Millis, that’s who!
Columbia Physics is ecstatic to announce that following Professor Millis’s prestigious Bardeen Prize win back in February, he has now been named as one of two recipients for the Larkin Senior Researcher Award, which is conferred by University of Minnesota’s William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute. This year’s selection committee consisted of three faculty from the University of Minnesota – Hart Goldman, Alex Kamenev, and Oskar Vafek – as well as Liang Fu from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In selecting Professor Millis, they cited his “groundbreaking theoretical discoveries in physics of correlated electron materials.” Eduardo Fradkin from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is this year’s other recipient.
Candidates for both the senior and junior Larkin Awards must be formally nominated by fellow physicists, with nominations being accepted throughout the calendar year (nominations for 2027 are open!). The awards alternate subfields every other year. During even years, the nominees specialize in condensed matter theory and many-body theory. During odd years, they specialize in high-energy and math-physics.
Of course, we must give credit where credit is due, meaning we can’t claim Professor Millis solely for ourselves. He’s been busy with his work at the Simon Foundation’s Flatiron Institute for nearly as long as he’s been busy teaching and researching at Columbia. Still, there’s no limit to how proud either institute can be in calling him one of our own, and rest assured, we are very, very proud to do so.
Congratulations, Andy!
