The Dirac Prize is the name of four awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations, named in honour of Professor Paul Dirac, one of the great theoretical physicists of the 20th century.
The first-established prize is the Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics, awarded by the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, jointly with the Australian Institute of Physics on the occasion of the public Dirac Lecture. The Lecture and the Medal commemorate the visit to the university in 1975 of Professor Dirac, who gave five lectures there. The lectures were subsequently published as a book Directions of Physics (Wiley, 1978 – H. Hora and J. Shepanski, eds.). Professor Dirac donated the royalties from this book to the University for the establishment of the Dirac Lecture series. The prize includes a silver medal and honorarium. It was first awarded in 1979.
The Dirac Medal of the ICTP is given each year by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in honour of physicist P.A.M. Dirac. The award, announced each year on August 8 (Dirac's birthday), was first awarded in 1985.
An international committee of distinguished scientists selects the winners from a list of nominated candidates. The Committee invites nominations from scientists working in the fields of theoretical physics or mathematics.
The Dirac Medal of the ICTP is not awarded to Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, or Wolf Prize winners. However, several Dirac Medallists have subsequently won one of these awards.
The medallists receive a prize of US$5,000.
The Dirac Medal is awarded annually by the Institute of Physics ( Britain's and Ireland's main professional body for physicists) for "outstanding contributions to theoretical (including mathematical and computational) physics". The award, which includes a silver gilt medal and a £1000 prize, was decided upon by the Institute of Physics in 1985, and first granted in 1987.