2008 Dirac Medal Award Ceremony

[ICTP Info Point]

*2008 DIRAC MEDAL AWARD CEREMONY*
*
*Professor K.R. Sreenivasan
Director of the
Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
has the pleasure of inviting you to the

2008 Dirac Medal Award Ceremony* *on
*Thursday, March 26, 2009*
at 14.30 hrs.
in the Main Lecture Hall of the Leonardo Building
***
*Programme*
14.30 Welcome address by Professor K.R. Sreenivasan
Presentation of the awards

Dirac Lecture by Professor Juan M. Maldacena
The Theory at the End of the Universe

Dirac Lecture by Professor Joseph Polchinski
D-Branes and the Process of Theoretical Discovery

*THE 2008 DIRAC MEDAL AND PRIZE*
The 2008 Dirac Medal and Prize will be awarded to

*Juan Martin Maldacena, Joseph Polchinski and Cumrun Vafa* for their 
fundamental contributions to
superstring theory. Their studies range from early work on orbifold 
compactifications, physics and
mathematics of mirror symmetry, D-branes and black hole physics, as well 
as gauge theory-gravity
correspondence. Their contributions in uncovering the strong-weak 
dualities between seemingly different
string theories have enabled us to learn about regimes of quantum field 
theory which are not accessible to
perturbative analysis. These profound achievements have helped us to 
address outstanding questions like
confinement of quarks and QCD mass spectrum from a new perspective and 
have found applications in
practical calculations in the fluid dynamics of quark gluon plasma.

The dualities have also led string theorists to conjecture that the five 
different superstring theories in ten
space-time dimensions are manifestations of one underlying theory, yet 
undiscovered, which has been
named the M-theory.
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