"I am honored by the very ambitious Fermi Prize, moved by the consideration and support of many colleagues and friends, and flattered by the company of Federico Capasso and Lev Pitaevskii, scientists whose contributions are immortal." Erio Tosatti, Professor Emeritus of SISSA - International School of Advanced Studies and co-founder and senior member of the Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics section of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), comments on the award of the 2018 “Enrico Fermi” Prize, the Italian Physical Society's (SIF) highest honor.
Established in 2001, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the eminent Italian physicist, the award is given annually to one or more scientists who have particularly honored physics with their discoveries. Erio Tosatti, Federico Capasso of Harvard University and Lev Pitaevskii of the University of Trento were awarded with the 2018 edition for their “outstanding contributions in understanding the quantum properties of condensed matter". The statement by SIF underlines Tosatti’s “fundamental theoretical contributions aimed to understand the optical properties of solids, in particular of surface and transport phenomena, even in extreme conditions of dimensional confinement, high temperature and pressure".