On September 28, the Neuron Endowment Fund awarded two leading scientists of the Institute of Physics. In the Pantheon of the National Museum, Václav Petříček received the highest prize awarded, Neuron Prize for Contribution to World Science, and Prokop Hapala was ranked by the Neuron Board among seven promising young scientists awarded.
At a ceremony on 22 September 2021, the president of the Czech Academy of Sciences Eva Zažímalová decorated five researchers from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences for their achievements in physics. Two others from the FZU received medals for their Merit for the Czech Academy of Sciences for their excellent contribution to the development of their expert area.
A research team of the Laboratory of Biophysics won the Cells 2021 Best Video Abstract Awards contest. The winning video abstract of the Biophysics team is a crisp illustration of the research paper, published in journal Cells. The Award Committee highly evaluated the research novelty, video quality and votes of the readers.
Libor Šmejkal from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences has won the second place in the “Best Dissertation Thesis” category in this year’s Werner von Siemens Award. Libor won the award for the thesis entitled “Topology band theory of relativistic spintronics in antiferromagnets” supervised by professor Tomáš Jungwirth.
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research awarded the JINR Prize for 2020 to the team whose member is Dr. Nikita Medvedev, deputy head of the theory group in the Department of Radiation and Chemical Physics (Institute of Physics) and head of the theory group in the Laser Plasma Department (Institute of Plasma Physics).
Within European Researchers' Night an online art opening of the FZU Photo Competition 2020 was performed and winners were announced. Alexey Bubnov got the 2nd place for his image of a beautiful liquid crystal texture resembling the Sun’s corona.
An international independent committee has awarded the Rudolf Lukeš Prize for 2020 to Pavel Jelínek for his research of chemical properties of molecular structures on solid surfaces. It was the scanning microscopy techniques being developed with the potential to find application in organic chemistry that captured attention of the assessors.
A total of seven Lumina Quaeruntur premiums for researchers of younger and middle generation have been awarded by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic within a programme to support prospective scientists. One of the recognized researchers is Ippocratis Saltas from Centre for Cosmology and Fundamental Physics of the Institute of Physics. The annual ceremony at which laureates are handed over prizes by Eva Zažímalová, the president of the Academy of Sciences, was postponed due to epidemiological measures.
Humans in every civilisation have always been intrigued by the question of the origin of life. During thousands of years, numerous answers have been provided by mystics and clerics. Then, philosophers offered their own speculative solutions of this conundrum. Science entered the field not long ago. Systematic investigations of physical and chemical phenomena, which likely played a role in the origin of life, began in the middle of last century. Currently, it represents a strong research stream wherein also our Institute participates.
