Professor Shivaji Sondhi FRS has been elected to two distinguished American learned societies. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. He was also selected to be invested as a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL) at its annual ceremony on 4 November 2026. Professor Sondhi is the Wykeham Professor at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University.
The NAS is an American nonprofit organisation comprising the country's leading researchers. Announced each spring, election to the NAS honours original research; this year's cohort includes 120 US members and 25 international members recognised for distinguished and continuing achievements. The AASL is a learned society dedicated to honouring excellence in scholarship across the disciplines of the modern university. Each year, 60 new members are invested at its annual ceremony, held at the Library of Congress. Members include Nobel and Pulitzer laureates, MacArthur fellows, and recipients of major prizes across academia.
Professor Sondhi is a theoretical condensed matter physicist whose work has primarily focused on novel forms of order in many-body systems – both naturally occurring and those enabled by advances in experimental techniques. He is best known for predicting two new types of exotic particles in real materials – 'skyrmions' in two-dimensional electron gases under high magnetic fields and 'magnetic monopoles' in spin-ice compounds – and for elucidating how 'time crystals' constitute entirely new, non-equilibrium states of matter.
Professor Sondhi’s work has been recognised with the McMillan Award, the Sloan and Packard Fellowships, the Humboldt Award, the Europhysics Prize for Condensed Matter Physics, election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and, last year, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
'As an American expatriate, I am especially deeply honoured to be recognised by these two learned societies,' comments Professor Sondhi. 'It also reassures me that my colleagues back in the United States have not forgotten me!'
Professor Andrew Boothroyd, Head of Department, comments: 'I am delighted that Shivaji has been recognised by not one but two of the foremost learned societies in the world. It is a deserved reflection of his achievements brought about through a highly original way of thinking about the physical world.'