Spanish quantum physicist Ignacio Cirac has been awarded the 2026 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics for pioneering contributions that founded modern quantum information science. The award recognizes work that has united theoretical insight with experimental vision and shaped quantum physics and technology worldwide.
Cirac, a director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, is best known for a proposal developed in the 1990s with Peter Zoller, then at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The «Cirac-Zoller» proposal offered an experimentally plausible route from the theoretical idea of a quantum computer to an actual machine, using trapped ions as the building blocks. That approach remains one of the leading platforms for quantum computing today.
Beyond quantum computing, Cirac showed how controlled quantum many-body systems can act as simulators to solve difficult problems in physics, chemistry, and materials science. He and collaborators also pioneered long-distance quantum communication, including the concept of a quantum repeater that offers a way to distribute entanglement across distances despite losses and imperfections.
Born in Barcelona in 1965, Cirac earned a PhD in physics from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1991. After a period at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, he moved to Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck in 1996. In 2001 he became a director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics.
The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize is presented annually by the Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World, for world-leading contributions to physics by an individual of any nationality. Cirac said he is «deeply honoured» to receive the award. «I'm very thankful to the people who have made this prize possible – it's a team working for many years,» he said. «I am immensely grateful to all of them for the privilege of having worked together and for everything we have accomplished along the way.»
IOP president Paul Howarth called Cirac «hugely deserving» of the honour, noting that his influence extends beyond quantum science to the generation of researchers who have followed him. «Professor Cirac's pioneering work has helped shape modern quantum information science, providing crucial theoretical foundations for advances in quantum computing, simulation and communications,» Howarth said. «His achievements demonstrate how fundamental physics can expand our understanding of the world while opening up new possibilities for technology.»
Cirac's other honours include the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2013, the Max Planck Medal in 2018, and the inaugural ICTP-IBM Richard Feynman Prize in Quantum Computing.
The award forms part of the IOP's wider 2026 honours, which recognize everyone from early-career scientists and teachers to technicians and subject specialists. The school engagement programme Orbyts received the Lawrence Bragg Medal and Prize for outstanding work empowering girls and students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds in physics education through research partnerships and supporting physics teachers with novel teaching materials.
Sarah Bohndiek of the University of Cambridge was awarded the Rosalind Franklin Medal and Prize for pioneering the use of light and sound in early disease detection, with a focus on clinical translation and equitable healthcare outcomes. Natalie Lines, a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth, won the Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize for exceptional early-career contributions to observational cosmology and the application of machine learning to large-scale astronomical surveys, with particular distinction in strong gravitational lensing.
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