2/24/2026
Dung-Hai Lee of the University of California, Berkeley, Andrew J. Millis of Columbia University and The Flatiron Institute, and Michael R. Norman of Argonne National Laboratory share the prestigious award.
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The 2026 John Bardeen Prize has been awarded to three scientists whose seminal theoretical works have “not only substantially advanced our understanding of the microscopic and phenomenological properties of unconventional superconductors, but also established the foundations for interpreting modern, widely employed experimental probes of superconductivity.”
The prestigious John Bardeen Prize, which is conferred every three years, honors the two-time Nobel Prize in Physics winner John Bardeen (1908–1991), who was a professor of physics and of electrical engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The John Bardeen Prize was established in 1991 by the organizers of the International Conference on the Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (M2S) and is sponsored by the Illinois Department of Physics and by the Friends of Bardeen.
This year's John Bardeen Prize winners are
Dung-Hai Lee (University of California, Berkeley, USA), “for pioneering theoretical work that fundamentally shaped the interpretation of scanning tunneling microscopy experiments in unconventional superconductors and for groundbreaking contributions to microscopic theories of unconventional pairing via functional renormalization group and other advanced theoretical methods.”
Andrew J. Millis (Columbia University and The Flatiron Institute, USA), “for pioneering theoretical work that fundamentally shaped the interpretation of optical experiments in unconventional superconductors and for groundbreaking contributions to the elucidation of pairing mechanisms in a wide range of materials and models, including their connection to quantum criticality.”
Michael R. Norman (Argonne National Laboratory, USA), “for pioneering theoretical work that fundamentally shaped the interpretation of photoemission experiments in unconventional superconductors and for groundbreaking contributions via materials-oriented approaches to the phenomenological understanding of many superconducting materials, including the recently discovered nickelates.”
The prize winners will be presented with their awards at the M2S conference in Stuttgart, Germany in July. The prize carries a monetary award of $7,500, which is evenly split by the recipients of the prize, as well as a certificate.
The winners were selected by members of the John Bardeen Prize Committee:
Lara Benfatto (Sapienza University of Rome)
Greg Boebinger (Florida State University)
Rafael Fernandes (Chair, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Liang Fu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Peter Hirschfeld (University of Florida)
Yoshiteru Maeno (Toyota Riken – Kyoto University Research Center)