Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

President of the the Czech Academy of Sciences prof. J. Drahoš awarded the Ernst Mach Honorary Medal for Merit in Physical Sciences to prof. Alexander Lichtenstein on October 8th, 2015. The nomination of prof. Lichtenstein was prepared by the Institute of Physics CAS.

Prof. Alexander Lichtenstein is a world leading expert in the theory of magnetism in solids. The microscopic description of the solid state magnetic properties is based on the electron-electron interactions, so-called electron correlations between the electrons in the crystal lattice. The research of prof. Lichtenstein is focused on theoretical analysis of the electron correlations in realistic materials, and he has made a significant contribution to the theory of the magnetic interactions in solids based on their chemical bonding.

Since 2004, he is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Hamburg. Before that, he was a professor at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and the researcher at FZ-Juelich, and at Max-Planck-Institute Stuttgart, Germany. In 1995, he obtained the State Prize of Russian Federation for his contribution to the development of science and technology. In 2014, the British and German Physical Societes awarded him Max Born Medal for outstanding contribution to the theory of magnetism and electron correlations in realistic materials. He has a long history of active collaboration with the scientists from the Department of Condensed Matter Theory of the Institute of Physics CAS that resulted in a number of publications in high-ranking journals, and common CSF-DFG research grants.