Nobel Prize 2021: Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi jointly win Physics Award

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.”

Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies of chaotic and apparently random phenomena. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it. Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes.

The first half of the prize money will be awarded to Syukuro Manabe from Princeton University, USA and Klaus Hasselmann from Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”. While the other half will go to Giorgio Parisi from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

Syukuro "Suki" Manabe, is a meteorologist and climatologist who pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations. Born in 1931, Manabe received his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1958 and went to the United States to work at the General Circulation Research Section of the U.S. Weather Bureau. He currently serves as a senior meteorologist at Princeton University.

Klaus Hasselmann, born 25 October 1931 in Hamburg, is a leading German oceanographer and climate modeller. He is probably best known for developing the Hasselmann model of climate variability.

Giorgio Parisi, (Birth 1948), is an Italian theoretical physicist, whose research has focused on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics and complex systems. His best-known contributions are the QCD evolution equations for Parton densities. the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation describing dynamic scaling of growing interfaces, and the study of whirling flocks of birds.

“The discoveries being recognised this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on rigorous analysis of observations. This year’s Laureates have all contributed to us gaining deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems,” says Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

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