Winners of Bernd T. Matthias Prize announced

Three scientists have been named as recipients of the 2015 Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials, an international prize awarded for innovative contributions to the field.

The winners are Xianhui Chen of the University of Science and Technology of China, Zachary Fisk of the University of California-Irvine and Zhongxian Zhao of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.

The prize was created in 1989 by friends and colleagues of Bernd T. Matthias, a German-born physicist who immigrated to the United States in 1947 and is noted for his discovery of nearly 1,000 superconducting materials. The Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston (TcSUH) has sponsored the prize since 2000.

In addition to sharing the $6,000 prize, each winner will receive a framed certificate designed by Elsevier Publishers. The prize will be formally presented during the 2015 M2S-HTSC international conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in August.

Chen was recognized for his discovery of (Li,Fe)OHFe(Se,S), Ybx(Me)yHfNCl (Me= NH3 and THF), and doped phenanthrene, broadening the material base for superconducting studies.

Fisk was honored for the discovery of UBe13, UPt3, ThCoC2 and LaRhSi3, for unraveling the roles of heavy fermions and non-centrosymmetry in superconductivity.

And Zhao was recognized for the discovery of RE(O,F) and (RE)O1-xFeAs - RE stands for rare earth - with a Tc (transition temperature) up to 55 K, demonstrating the limit of Tc in bulk Fe-based superconductors.

All three, along with winners of the H. Kamerlingh Onnes Prize and the John Barden Prize, will make presentations after the ceremony. For more information on the conference, visit http://www.m2s-2015.ch/

2015 Matthias Prize Committee members include Chairman Paul Ching-Wu Chu, T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science at UH and founding director of TcSUH; Ivan Bozovic, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Guy Deutscher, Tel Aviv University; Hideo Hosono, Tokyo Institute of Technology; Hai-Hu Wen, Nanjing University; and Susan Butler, associate director of TcSUH and Matthias Prize coordinator.

Provided by University of Houston