Canadian physicist wins top nanoscience prize

Allan MacDonald, a Canadian physicist based at the University of Texas at Austin, has become the first Canadian to win the Kavli Prize in nanoscience—a US$1-million award from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

MacDonald, 74, shares the honour with Eva Andrei of Rutgers University and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero at MIT. The three are credited with uncovering how quantum properties of two-dimensional layered materials, such as graphene, can change drastically when the layers are slightly rotated relative to each other. In certain materials and angles, those layers can become superconductors—allowing electricity to flow without resistance. The field became known as "Twistronics."

Born and educated in Canada, MacDonald hails from Antigonish, N.S., and earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1978. He spent nearly a decade at the National Research Council of Canada before moving to Indiana and then Texas to pursue academic positions—a move he said was necessary because Canadian opportunities were limited in the 1980s.

"I had to go to the States to get somebody to give me a chance," he said in a recent interview from Nova Scotia.

MacDonald has won other major awards, including the Wolf Prize in Physics. The Kavli nanoscience prize, established in 2008, has special resonance for him because "it specifically recognizes the area in which I work." He continues to advise Canada's quantum materials research community, including CIFAR's long-running quantum materials program based in Toronto.

The prize underscores Canada's ongoing contributions to cutting-edge physics, even as leading researchers often pursue careers abroad.