University of Chicago physicist Clay Córdova has been named a recipient of the 2026 New Horizons in Physics Prize for his work in quantum field theory.
He was recognized alongside three colleagues: Thomas Dumitrescu of UCLA, Shu-Heng Shao of MIT, and Yifan Wang of New York University.
The New Horizons prize, which is given to early-career scientists and mathematicians who have already made a substantial impact on their fields, includes an award of $100,000.
The prizes are part of a larger set awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founding sponsors: Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. Sometimes referred to as the “Oscars of Science,” the Breakthrough Prizes are presented annually in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.
Córdova and his colleagues were cited for “generalizing the notion of symmetry in various ways, and for exploring the consequences of these generalized symmetries, in quantum field theory, particle physics, condensed matter physics, string theory, and quantum information theory.”
“I am very happy to receive this prize!” Córdova wrote. “It means a great deal to have this work recognized, because it grows out of deep questions about quantum field theory, symmetry, and phases of matter that I have been lucky to explore with my wonderful collaborators.
“Most of all, it encourages me to keep pursuing ambitious ideas at the frontier of theoretical physics.”
Córdova is a theoretical physicist focusing primarily on quantum field theory, a unifying framework for a broad array of physical phenomena. His research has involved aspects of particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity, as well as related topics in mathematics.
Córdova holds a PhD in physics from Harvard University. Prior to joining UChicago, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Long-Term Member at the Institute for Advanced Study.
The collaboration that conducted the Muon g-2 experiment—led at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago—was also recognized this year with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The Muon g-2 experiment provided the world’s most precise measurement to date of the muon, one of the fundamental subatomic particles.
A history of breakthroughs
Breakthrough Prizes have previously been awarded to multiple University of Chicago-affiliated researchers.
These include mathematician Alex Eskin in 2019 for the “magic wand” theorem; physicist Craig Hogan, who received the Breakthrough Prize in 2015 for his work on the High-Z Supernova Search Team that helped prove that the universe is expanding faster and faster over time; several scientists in 2019 who were part of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration that created the first image of a black hole; Daniel Holz and Hsin-Yu Chen in 2016 for their work as part of the LIGO collaboration that made the first detection of gravitational waves; and in 2023, to two scientists who discovered a fundamental way that cells organize while teaching a course at the UChicago-affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory. UChicago scientists were also part of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, which was recognized in 2025.
The New Horizons Prize was awarded in 2025 to Ewain Gwynne for mathematical contributions in the field of conformal probability; in 2023 to Hannes Bernien and colleagues for developing methods to control individual atoms; in 2022 to mathematician Sebastian Hurtado-Salazar for proving the Zimmer conjecture; in 2019 to physicist Michael Levin for “incisive contributions to the understanding of topological states of matter and the relationships between them;” and in 2016 to mathematician André Neves for contributions to several areas of differential geometry.
