Since 2003, the Einstein Prize is a biennial prize awarded by the American Physical Society. The recipients are chosen for their outstanding accomplishments in the field of gravitational physics. The prize is named after Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who authored the theories of special and general relativity. The prize was established by the Topical Group on Gravitation at the beginning of 1999. As of 2013, the prize is valued at $10,000.
For his contributions to experimental solar system tests of relativistic theories of gravity, and in particular for proposing and measuring the Shapiro time delay effect.
For his ground-breaking work on black hole entropy, which launched the field of black hole thermodynamics and transformed the long effort to unify quantum mechanics and gravitation.
For fundamental contributions to classical and semiclassical gravity studies, in particular, the discovery of the general formula for black hole entropy, and for developing a rigorous formulation of quantum field theory in curved spacetime.
