Symmetry in disorder——on the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded to three scientists, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, because “they found hidden patterns in the climate and in other complex phenomena”. Giorgio Parisi received half of the prize, “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”. Parisi’s theory on spin glasses deeply revealed the hidden symmetry in disordered systems, which is the focus of this article.