Rodney Baxter has been awarded the 2021 Henri Poincare Prize at the XX International Congress on Mathematical Physics in Geneva Aug 2-7,  "for groundbreaking contributions to the study of exactly solvable models in statistical mechanics, which have led to, and continue to inspire, profound developments across a broad spectrum of mathematics and physics."

The Prize recognizes outstanding contributions in mathematical physics and is awarded every three years at the International Mathematical Physics Congress.

Rodney's work has deeply influenced both mathematics and physics over many decades. The influence of his methods and results is enormous, ranging from pure mathematics to theoretical physics. One of the most important mathematical developments of the last thirty years has been revolutionary advances in the field of algebra and its intimate relation with mathematical physics. This revolution in algebra originates in Rodney’s brilliant inventions of what are now called the Yang-Baxter equation and the corner transfer matrix. In his pioneering papers on statistical mechanics Rodney has initiated and developed the study of the representation theory of quantum affine Lie algebras and discovered their connections with Rogers-Ramanujan identities.

Rodney's work has inspired the invention of quantum groups, the discovery of knot invariants, and the development of the powerful and systematic methods for solving integrable models. The concept of Yang-Baxter integrability continues to have far reaching implications in many-body physics and plays a fundamental role in the AdS/CFT correspondence in gauge/string theory.