Nobel prize in physics goes to research on complex physical systems

The 2021 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists who improved our understanding of the complexity of systems that range in scale from atoms to Earth’s climate. Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi’s research provided fundamental insights that underpin much of our knowledge of climate change.

Half of the prize was jointly awarded to Manabe and Hasselmann for their ‘physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming’. The other half of the 10 million Swedish kronor (£839,000) prize went to Giorgio Parisi for discovering ‘the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales’.