The Max Planck medal is the highest award of the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft), the world's largest organization of physicists, for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. The prize has been awarded annually since 1929, with few exceptions, and usually to a single person. The winner is awarded with a gold medal and hand-written parchment.

Alexander Markovich Polyakov is a Russian theoretical physicist, formerly at the Landau Institute in Moscow and, since 1989, at Princeton University, where he is the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus.