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Top Ten Physics Breakthroughs for 2012 Announced

14 Dec 2012 by iopp

The top ten breakthroughs in physics in 2012, as judged by Physics World magazine, have been announced.

The top spot in the list was taken by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN for their joint discovery of a Higgs-like particle at the Large Hadron Collider.

The top ten breakthroughs identified in the list were chosen by the Physics World editorial team, who reviewed over 350 news articles about advances in the physical sciences published on physicsworld.com in 2012.

The criteria for judging included:

  • Fundamental importance of research
  • Significant advance in knowledge
  • Strong connection between theory and experiment
  • General interest to all physicists

The award was founded in 2009. Last year’s winner was Professor Aephraim Steinberg and colleagues at the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control at the University of Toronto for their work using weak measurements to map photon trajectories in the double-slit experiment.

The complete list of 2012 winners is available on physicsworld.com.

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