The Materials Research Society has named John P. Perdew of Tulane University in New Orleans, La., as the recipient of the 2012 Materials Theory Award for his “pioneering contributions to the fundamental development and nonempirical approximations in density functional theory.” Perdew will be recognized during the awards ceremony at the 2012 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston. The Materials Theory Award, endowed by Toh-Ming Lu and Gwo-Ching Wang, “recognizes exceptional advances made by materials theory to the fundamental understanding of the structure and behavior of materials.”

In 1998, Walter Kohn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his 1964–1965 development of the density functional theory (DFT), recognizing a decisive milestone in the understanding of the behaviors of complex multi-electron and many-atomic systems. From there, Perdew and his colleagues helped build up the framework from first principles to resolve remaining challenges in materials science. For example, with David Langreth in the 1970s, Perdew derived the adiabatic connection formula, which expresses the exchange-correlation energy in terms of the exchange-correlation hole around an electron. Combining the adiabatic formula with the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, they also proposed the random phase approximation in a density functional context 30 years before its current popularity. With Mel Levy in the 1980s, he derived many analytic properties of the exact density functional, including scaling equalities and inequalities as well as the derivative discontinuity at integer electron number and its contribution to the fundamental bandgap. With Kieron Burke and Matthias Ernzerhof in the 1990s, Perdew developed a standard generalized gradient approximation in an article now cited more than 23,000 times. With the numerous approximations Perdew has introduced into the literature, thousands of researchers have been able to perform ever more accurate first-principles DFT calculations and simulations for many properties of many materials and molecules.

Perdew received his PhD degree from Cornell University (1971). He has over 260 publications. His honors include election to the International Academy of Molecular Sciences (2003) and the National Academy of Sciences (2011).