Mikhail Yevgenyevich Shaposhnikov (born in 1956 in
Sochi,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...
) is a Soviet-born Swiss theoretical physicist and a professor at
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
He is active in the fields of cosmology and particle physics.
Career
Mikhail Shaposhnikov graduated in physics from
Moscow State University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
in 1979 and obtained a PhD from the
Institute for Nuclear Research
Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INR RAS, russian: Институт ядерных исследований) is a Russian scientific research center "for further development of the experimental base and fundament ...
of the
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
in 1982 after defending his thesis on the topic of
baryon asymmetry
In physical cosmology, the baryon asymmetry problem, also known as the matter asymmetry problem or the matter–antimatter asymmetry problem, is the observed imbalance in baryonic matter (the type of matter experienced in everyday life) and antiba ...
of the universe in the frame of
grand unified theories
A Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is a model in particle physics in which, at high energies, the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model comprising the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces are merged into a single force. Although this u ...
.
From 1982 to 1991, he worked as a research scientist at the Theory Division of the
Institute for Nuclear Research
Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INR RAS, russian: Институт ядерных исследований) is a Russian scientific research center "for further development of the experimental base and fundament ...
of the
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
. In 1991 he moved to
CERN,
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...
, where he worked as a staff member at the Theory Division. In 1998 he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the
University of Lausanne
The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switze ...
, where he became director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in 1999. In October 2003 he was named professor at
EPFL.
[ In 2011 he gave a talk ''New Physics without New Energy Scale'' at the international symposium on subnuclear physics held in Vatican City.
]
Research
Together with Valery Rubakov
Valery Anatolyevich Rubakov (russian: Валерий Анатольевич Рубаков, 16 February 1955 – 18 October 2022) was a Russian theoretical physicist. His scientific interests included quantum field theory, elementary particle p ...
, Mikhail Shaposhnikov was recognized for being the first to propose novel models of space-time and gravity using brane cosmology
Brane cosmology refers to several theories in particle physics and cosmology related to string theory, superstring theory and M-theory.
Brane and bulk
The central idea is that the visible, three-dimensional universe is restricted to a brane in ...
. In 1985, in a seminal work with Vadim Kuzmin and Valery Rubakov, he clarified the conditions under which an explanation of the baryon number violation in the Standard Model
The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces ( electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. I ...
is possible.
Mikhail Shaposhnikov leads the laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC) at the Institute of Physics of the School of Basic Sciences at EPFL.
Distinctions
Mikhail Shaposhnikov is a recipient of the Andrei Sakharov gold medal awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
. In 2005, he was awarded with the Markov prize for fundamental physics. In 2008, he received the Humboldt research prize awarded by the Heidelberg University
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...
.
Shaposhnikov received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientif ...
in 2015 for the research project 'From Fermi to Planck : a bottom up approach'.
Political positions
In February-March 2022, he signed two open letters by Russian scientists condemning the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.An open letter to the Physics Community from physicists of Russian descent
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Selected publications
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaposhnikov, Mikhail
Academic staff of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Russian physicists
Living people
1956 births
People associated with CERN