$1 Million Astrophysics Prize Awarded to Three Scientists for Theory of Cosmic Inflation

The Kavli Prize is given to scientists in three fields: Astrophysics, Nanoscience, and Neuroscience. The prize for each field is worth $1 million and is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

The prizes were established in 2005 by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation. Each prize is awarded every two years to recognize achievements and research in the three fields of science, which helps promote public understanding of the work and engages scientists to work cooperatively at the international level.

This year's Kavli Prize in Astrophysics is shared between Alan H. Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Andrei D. Linde of Stanford University, and Alexei A. Starobinsky of the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences. They were given the award for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation, which suggests that the universe expanded exponentially shortly after the big bang.

These scientists helped further the theory of cosmic inflation, which the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters believes has revolutionized our thinking about the Universe. During the 1970s, the three men began to work independently on models of the early universe. Alan Guth first proposed a model of cosmic inflation back in 1980 and Alexei Starobinsky helped develop the idea. Andrei Linde later came up with a version of the theory of cosmic inflation, which he dubbed "chaotic inflation" in 1983.

Chaotic inflation encompasses most of the inflation scenarios that are studied today. The theory argued that the expansion of the early universe could have happened in any point of space given the right potential energy. Linde has since proposed more versions of it that have helped expand scientific thinking, which is why the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters believed he was worthy of the award. Guth and Starobinsky's pioneering efforts received admiration as well.