Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok

Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok not only witnessed but also led firsthand the revolutionary developments in the standard cosmological model caused by the fusion of particle physics and cosmology in the last 20 years.

Steinhardt is a theoretical physicist in the departments of physics and astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. His research spans cosmology, astrophysics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. He is a leading expert on inflationary cosmology and other events in the very early universe. His work led to the first inflationary models for the universe, to the discovery that inflation can seed galaxy formation, and to new observational tests. He also introduced the concept of quasicrystals and pioneered the study of their structural and elastic properties. Prior to his position at Princeton, Dr. Steinhardt served as the Mary Amanda Word Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Physics Society, and a member of the American Astronomical Society.

Turok pioneered mathematical and computational techniques that decisively disproved rival theories of structure formation such as cosmic strings. He made leading contributions to inflationary theory and to our understanding of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.

—Monica Amarelo

22 January 2003

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