Natalia Berloff and Mikhail Epstein are the new George Gamow award laureates

In accordance with the Regulations of the George Gamow® Award, established by the Russian American Science Association (RASA-America) in honor of the distinguished Russian American physicist Professor Georgy Antonovich Gamow (1904–1968), and to recognize members of the Russian-speaking scientific diaspora for outstanding achievements widely acknowledged by the scientific community, the 2026 G.A. Gamow Prize is awarded to:

Natalia Beloff, professor at the Cambridge University “For her groundbreaking contributions to quantum hydrodynamics and physics-inspired computing, and for her extraordinary breadth of interdisciplinary research connecting fundamental theoretical advances with experimental realizability and technological potential across the logistics, fintech, pharmaceutical, and data management sectors.”

Mikhail Epstein, professor at Emory University “For his pioneering contributions to the study of Russian postmodernism and conceptualism, significant advances in the philosophy and literary theory, construction of alternative concepts and propositions to multiple symbolic systems and theoretical models; and for his role as a public intellectual and advocate for the humanities and their transformative potential, articulating a vision of scholarship as a creative and forward-looking process.”

Natalia Berloff, photo from the personal archive	Mikhail Epstein, photo from the personal archive

“Gamow wrote that “it took less than an hour to make the atoms”. Nature solved an enormous many-body problem in an hour without executing a single instruction: the physics was the algorithm. Physics-inspired computing takes this literally. We write a hard optimization problem as the energy of a network of interacting spins, build that network out of real physics, condensates, coupled lasers, oscillators, and let it relax toward its lowest-energy state. Reading off that state reads off a solution: what a digital computer does by search, the hardware does by simply evolving. I thank the RASA and the Award Committee for this recognition, and I hope it draws more physicists, mathematicians and engineers into the question of how to make physics compute,” notes Natalia Berloff.

“The Gamow Award holds special significance for me. George Gamow embodied the kind of intellectual daring that bridges disciplines and crosses borders—a physicist whose thought ranged from the origins of the universe to the code of life, and who never lost the playful curiosity that makes science kin to the humanities. I see this award as a sign that the boundary between the sciences and the humanities is becoming ever more permeable—and that the humanities, no less than the sciences, can be a creative and world-transforming force,” Mikhail Epstein added.

Natalia Berloff is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and a Fellow of Jesus College. Born in Orenburg, she graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University and received her Ph.D. from Florida State University. After research and faculty positions at the University of California, Los Angeles, she joined Cambridge in 2002. She has been Director of Photonics at Skoltech (2013-2016) and  a visiting researcher at Microsoft (2021-2023). Berloff’s research concerns coherence in non-equilibrium quantum systems: superfluids and Bose-Einstein condensates of atoms, excitons and polaritons. Her group was among the first to propose polariton condensates and other optical systems as physical simulators and optimizers, and now develops physics-inspired computing, from Ising and XY machines to neuromorphic architectures and analog platforms for artificial intelligence. Her honors include an NIH/NHGRI Career Development Award and the Pilkington Prize. She leads the π-computing group, co-directs the UK Multidisciplinary Neuromorphic Center (NeuroSYNC) and chairs the American Physical Society’s Committee on International Freedom of Scientists.

Mikhail N. Epstein is a Russian-American philosopher, cultural theorist, and literary scholar—one of the founding theorists of Russian postmodernism. The unifying impulse of his work is the expansion of the thinkable: where scholarship usually describes what exists, Epstein constructs alternatives to prevailing theories and sign systems—possible philosophies, new disciplines, genres, concepts, and words. His work has given rise to the philosophy of the possible, transculture, and the transformative humanities—scholarship as a creative, world-changing force. In recent years he has been developing a philosophy of artificial intelligence as a new stage in the evolution of thought. Educated at Moscow State University, Epstein moved to the United States in 1990. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emeritus of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University. He is the author of 50 books and numerous articles, translated into 26 languages. His honors include the Andrei Bely Prize (1991), the Liberty Prize (New York, 2000), and the MLA Scaglione Prize for the best book in Slavic studies (2023).

The 2026 George Gamow® Award Committee included Tatiana Bronich (Northeastern University), Igor Efimov (Northwestern University), Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia University), Konstantin Sonin (University of Chicago, Chair), and Alexandra Zhernakova (University of Groningen).

The award ceremony will take place as part of the 17th Annual Conference of the Russian American Science Association (RASA), to be held on November 7-8, 2026, at the Simpson Querrey Biomedical Research Center, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. The conference will honor Andrei Sakharov, a brilliant physicist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and enduring symbol of intellectual courage and integrity.

The RASA Award was established in 2015 in memory of Georgy Antonovich Gamow, an outstanding representative of the scientific diaspora and a distinguished Soviet and American theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, and popularizer of science. The 2025 George Gamow Award laureates are chemist Anna Krylov and historian Mikhail Yampolsky.