Professor Philip Phillips has been selected for the Rudranath Capildeo Award for Applied Science and Technology by the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago’s National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST). This is the highest scientific honor of this country, presented to a national for outstanding achievements in science and technology, for providing a positive role model to youth, and for contributing to Caribbean scientific heritage.
Phillips is a theoretical condensed matter physicist whose leading-edge research on high-temperature cuprate superconductors focuses on explaining current experimental observations that challenge the standard paradigms of electron transport and magnetism. Phillips applies geometry and quantum field theory to disordered and strongly correlated low-dimensional systems to understand the properties of these materials.
Phillips’s work has earned him an international reputation. He is the inventor of various models for Bose metals, of the term “Mottness,” and of the random dimer model which exhibits extended states in one dimension, thereby representing an exception to Anderson's localization theorem. He is the author of the comprehensive textbook Advanced Solid State Physics, published by the Cambridge University Press.
Phillips earned his bachelor's degree in math and chemistry from Walla Walla College in 1979 and his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from the University of Washington in 1982. After a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship at Berkeley, he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1984-1993). Phillips research interests led him to the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois in 1993.
Phillips is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and served the society as general councilor during the 1999/2000 academic year. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the recipient of many honors; among these, he received the Senior Xerox Faculty Award in 1998, was named a Beckman Associate at the Center for Advanced Study for the 1998–1999 academic year, was the Edward A. Bouchet Lecturer of the American Physical Society in 2000, was selected as a University Scholar at the University of Illinois in 2004, was named Bliss Faculty Scholar by the College of Engineering in 2005, and was chosen one of twelve inaugural National Science Foundation American Competitiveness Initiative Fellows in 2008.
The Rudranath Capildeo Award is named for Dr. Rudranath Capildeo, renowned for his intellectual contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and physics. His interest in and understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity resulted in new theories, such as the Theory of Rotation and Gravity, or Capildeo’s Theory. He was also a gifted mathematics and physics educator taught at the University College London among other institutions.
The award will be presented to Phillips by NIHERST, together with the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, in a ceremony in the Port of Spain on November 23, 2013.