Michele Parrinello is an Italian physicist particularly known for his work in molecular dynamics (the computer simulation of physical movements of atoms and molecules). Parrinello and Roberto Car were awarded the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the Sidney Fernbach Award in 2009 for their continuing development of the Car–Parrinello method, first proposed in their seminal 1985 paper,[2] "Unified Approach for Molecular Dynamics and Density-Functional Theory". They have continued to receive awards for this breakthrough, most recently the Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences and the 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry.