[2][3][4] He is best known for his discovery of supergravity with Sergio Ferrara and Daniel Z. Freedman for which he along with his collaborators won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2019.
[5] Peter van Nieuwenhuizen studied physics and mathematics at the University of Utrecht, where he obtained in 1971 his Ph.D. under the supervision of later Nobel laureate Martinus Veltman.
For constructing supergravity, the first supersymmetric extension of Einstein's theory of general relativity, and for their central role in its subsequent development Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, Sergio Ferrara and Daniel Z. Freedman received in 1993 the Dirac medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (Italy), in 2006 the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics of the American Physical Society and in 2016 the Ettore Majorana Medal from EMFCSC, Erice.
In 2019 the three were awarded a special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics of $3 million[7] for the discovery.
He was made a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion in 2004, and Honorary professor of the Technical University of Vienna (Austria) in 2005.