Richard Samuel Ward
FRS (born 6 September 1951) is a British
mathematical physicist. He is a Professor of Mathematical & Theoretical Particle Physics at the
University of Durham.
Work
Ward earned his Ph.D. from the
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
in 1977, under the supervision of
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, Philosophy of science, philosopher of science and Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics i ...
. He is most famous for his extension of Penrose's
twistor theory to nonlinear cases, which he with
Michael Atiyah used to describe
instantons by vector bundles on the three-dimensional complex
projective space. He has related interests in the theory of
monopoles,
topological solitons
In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a nonlinear, self-reinforcing, localized wave packet that is , in that it preserves its shape while propagating freely, at constant velocity, and recovers it even after collisions with other such locali ...
and
skyrmions.
Honors and awards
Ward was awarded the
Whitehead Prize in 1989 for his work in mathematical physics. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2005.
Notices of the AMS - Sept 2005
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
His certificate of election reads:
Bibliography
Books
''Twistor geometry and field theory''
(with Raymond O. Wells Jr), Cambridge University Press 1990
''Integrable systems: twistors, loop groups, and Riemann surfaces''
(with Nigel Hitchin, Graeme Segal), Oxford, Clarendon Press 1999
Selected academic works
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Richard S.
Academics of Durham University
Fellows of the Royal Society
Living people
1951 births