The Department of Physics congratulates Abhay Ashtekar on the award of the 2018 Einstein Prize for research on gravitational physics. Ashtekar was a Professor of Physics at Syracuse University from 1980 – 1993, when he took his present position at Pennsylvania State University. Previous recipients of the prize include Peter Bergmann, the inaugural recipient who was a professor here for almost forty years, and Ezra Ted Newman, who received his doctorate from Syracuse.