For the first time in the 15-year history of the ICTP's Dirac Medal, the selection committee has chosen a woman as one of the medallists. Helen Quinn, staff scientist in theoretical physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Stanford, California, will share the medal with Howard Georgi, professor of physics at Harvard University, and Jogesh Pati, professor of physics at the University of Maryland. The announcement was made on 8 August, the birthday of the famed physicist and Nobel Prize winner Paul A.M. Dirac, who died in 1984. Dirac was one of the Centre's most forceful advocates during its first two decades of existence. The three scientists are being honoured for their "pioneering contributions to the quest for a unified theory of quarks and leptons and the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions." Their research tracks the same line of investigation that earned the ICTP's founding director, Abdus Salam, the Nobel Prize in 1979. Salam shared the prize with Weinberg and Glashow for proposing a theory of unification of nature's electromagnetic and weak forces. For additional information about the Dirac Medal and other ICTP awards, click here.