2010 ICTP Prize Awarded to Shiraz Minwalla

[Info Point]

We are pleased to announce that the

2010 ICTP Prize

is awarded to

Shiraz Minwalla
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Mumbai, India

in honour of
Nicola Cabibbo

Shiraz Minwalla is recognised for his many outstanding contributions in
the field of String theory and Gauge/Gravity duality that have
influenced a great deal of research in many areas. Some of his
outstanding contributions are: his works on ultraviolet/infrared mixing
in non-commutative field theories, non-commutative solitons,
gauge/string theory duality in the Penrose limit, closed string tachyon
condensation, Hagedorn like phase transition in weakly coupled
Yang-Mills theories, relating plasma balls in large N gauge theories to
black holes in the gravity duals and his most recent works on obtaining
equations of Nonlinear fluid dynamics in 3+1 dimensions from Einstein's
equation for black-branes in 5-dimensional anti-de-Sitter space as well
as a study of weak field black hole formation in asymtotically
anti-de-Sitter spacetimes and its relation to the thermalization process
in the dual conformal field theory.

Nicola Cabibbo is one of the greatest theoretical high energy
physicists, with many ground-breaking contributions to the field. In
particular, Cabibbo’s discovery of mixing in weak interactions has
established the existence of a new class of physical constants, whose
first example is the Cabibbo angle. This angle determines the mixing of
strange quarks with non-strange quarks and has been measured
experimentally. Cabibbo’s work on quark mixing was fundamental for the
development of unified theories of weak and electromagnetic
interactions, as well as for the clarification of the interrelation
between different quark species. With the discovery of a third family of
quarks and leptons, quark mixing led to the understanding of the
phenomenon of CP violation. Cabibbo has also been a key player since the
early days of ICTP and is currently the chair of the ICTP Scientific
Council.


The 2010 ICTP Prize Committee
P.Creminelli
L.Göttsche
F.Kucharski
M.Marsili (Chairman)


7 May 2010