Francesco Iachello (; born 11 January 1942, in

Francofonte Francofonte ( Sicilian: ''Francufonti'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily, southern Italy, located about southeast of Palermo and about northwest of Syracuse. Francofonte borders the following municipalities: B ...

) is an Italian nuclear engineer and theoretical physicist, who works mainly on nuclear and molecular physics. He and his collaborator

Akito Arima was a Japanese nuclear physicist and politician, known for the interacting boson model. Personal life Arima was born 1930 in Osaka. He studied at the University of Tokyo, where he received his doctorate in 1958. He became a research associate at ...

are the creators of the "

interacting boson model The interacting boson model (IBM) is a model in nuclear physics in which nucleons ( protons or neutrons) pair up, essentially acting as a single particle with boson properties, with integral spin of 0, 2 or 4. It is sometimes known as the Inter ...

Biography

Iachello attained a doctorate 1964 as a nuclear technology engineer at the polytechnic institute in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. Th ...

and 1969 a doctorate in physics at the

MIT Center for Theoretical Physics The MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) is the hub of theoretical nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum information research at MIT. It is a subdivision of MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics. Research C ...

. Since 1978 he has been at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, where he is at present J. W. Gibbs professor for physics and chemistry. Iachello received the Chiaudano prize in 1968 and was a

Fulbright Fellow The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

in 1964. He was awarded in 1990 the

Wigner Medal The International Colloquium on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics is an academic conference devoted to applications of group theory to physics. It was founded in 1972 by Henri Bacry and Aloysio Janner. It hosts a colloquium every two years. The ...

, in 1991 both the Taormina Prize and the Dutch AKZO Prize, and in 1993, along with Akito Arima, the Tom W. Bonner Prize of the American Physical Society. Iachello became a foreign member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

in 1996. He is also member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences. In 1997 he received the Centennial Prize of the Italian Physical Society. In 2002 he received the Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society. He has honorary doctorates from the

University of Ferrara The University of Ferrara ( it, Università degli Studi di Ferrara) is the main university of the city of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. In the years prior to the First World War the University of Ferrara, with more than 5 ...

, the

University of Seville The University of Seville (''Universidad de Sevilla'') is a university in Seville, Spain. Founded under the name of ''Colegio Santa María de Jesús'' in 1505, it has a present student body of over 69.200, and is one of the top-ranked universi ...

, and Chung Yuan University in China. Iachello is famous for the application of algebraic methods (

Lie algebras In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an operation called the Lie bracket, an alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow \mathfrak g, that satisfies the Jacobi iden ...

) to the investigation of the spectra of atomic nuclei and molecules. In 1974 with Akito Arima he introduced the "Interacting Boson Model" into nuclear physics. This important model describes collective nuclear states with the help of the unitary group U(6). The underlying concept is to derive a model with pairs of neutrons and protons instead of unpaired nucleons. The pairs are treated as

boson In particle physics, a boson ( ) is a subatomic particle whose spin quantum number has an integer value (0,1,2 ...). Bosons form one of the two fundamental classes of subatomic particle, the other being fermions, which have odd half-integer s ...

s with different quantum spin (s- and d- bosons, as named according to spin 0 and 2). In an extension of the model, the analogous effect with unpaired

fermion In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Generally, it has a half-odd-integer spin: spin , spin , etc. In addition, these particles obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Fermions include all quarks and ...

s has a description using supersymmetrical algebras. In recent times he has worked mainly on the investigation of the quantum mechanical dynamics of molecules (e.g. quantum phase transitions, polymer dynamics) with algebraic methods, on which Iachello already began to work in 1981 (Vibron Model).

Works

* * (1st edition 1987)p. 80p. 81
/ref> * * * *Arima; Iachello "Interacting boson model of collective states", Part 1 (the vibrational limit) Annals of physics Vol. 99, 1976, pp. 253–317, Part 2 (the rotational limit) ibid. Vol. 111, 1978, pp. 201–38, Part 3 with Scholten (the transition from SU(5) to SU(3)), ibid. Vol. 115, 1978, pp. 325–66, Part 4 (the O(6) limit) ibid. Vol. 123, 1979, pp. 468–92 *

References

External links

Homepage at Yale
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iachello, Francesco 1942 births Living people 21st-century Italian engineers Italian expatriates in the United States 20th-century Italian physicists Scientists from Sicily Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Nuclear physicists People from Francofonte Theoretical physicists Yale University faculty MIT Center for Theoretical Physics alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society 21st-century Italian physicists