Savas Dimopoulos (; el, Σάββας Δημόπουλος; born 1952) is a

particle physicist Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and b ...

at Stanford University. He worked at CERN from 1994 to 1997. Dimopoulos is well known for his work on constructing theories beyond the Standard Model.

Life

He was born an ethnic

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

and later moved to

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...

due to ethnic tensions in Turkey during the 1950s and 1960s.

Education and career

Dimopoulos studied as an undergraduate at the

University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...

. He went to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

and studied under

Yoichiro Nambu was a Japanese-American physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery in 1960 of the mechanism ...

for his doctoral studies. After completing his Ph.D. in 1979, he briefly went to

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

before taking a faculty position at Stanford University in 1980. During 1981 and 1982 he was also affiliated with the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the ...

. From 1994 to 1997 he was on leave from Stanford University and was employed by CERN. Dimopoulos is well known for his work on constructing theories beyond the Standard Model, which are currently being searched for and tested at particle colliders like

LHC The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundr ...

at CERN and at experiments all over the world. For example, in 1981 he proposed a

softly broken Softly may refer to: * ''Softly'' (Hank Locklin album) or the title track, 1968 * ''Softly'' (Roseanna Vitro album), 1993 * ''Softly'' (Shirley Horn album), 1988 * ''Softly'' (The Sandpipers album), 1968 * ''Softly'' (Tatsuro Yamashita album), ...

SU(5) GUT model with

Howard Georgi Howard Mason Georgi III (born January 6, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. He is also Director of Undergraduate Studies in Physics. He was Co-M ...

, which is one of the foundational papers of the

Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is an extension to the Standard Model that realizes supersymmetry. MSSM is the minimal supersymmetrical model as it considers only "the inimumnumber of new particle states and new interactions con ...

(MSSM). He also proposed the ADD model of

large extra dimension In particle physics and string theory (M-theory), the ADD model, also known as the model with large extra dimensions (LED), is a model framework that attempts to solve the hierarchy problem. (''Why is the force of gravity so weak compared to the e ...

s with

Nima Arkani-Hamed Nima Arkani-Hamed ( fa, نیما ارکانی حامد; born April 5, 1972) is an American-Canadian

and

Gia Dvali Georgi (Gia) Dvali ( Georgian: გიორგი (გია) დვალი; born May 30, 1964) is a Georgian theoretical physicist and science communicator in Georgia. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian Univers ...

Awards

In 2006, the American Physical Society awarded Dimopoulos the

Sakurai Prize The J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, is presented by the American Physical Society at its annual April Meeting, and honors outstanding achievement in particle physics theory. The prize consists of a monetary award ($10,000 ...

, "For his creative ideas on dynamical symmetry breaking,

supersymmetry In a supersymmetric theory the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical. In theoretical and mathematical physics, any theory with this property has the principle of supersymmetry (SUSY). Dozens of supersymmetric theories e ...

, and extra spatial dimensions, which have shaped theoretical research on TeV-scale physics, thereby inspiring a wide range of experiments." In 2006, he received the Caterina Tomassoni and Felice Pietro Chisesi Prize at the University of Rome, Italy. "The prize recognizes and encourages outstanding achievements in physics. Dimopoulos was lauded by the Tomassoni Committee as "one of the leading figures in theoretical particle physics. His proposal of the supersymmetric standard model has aided the understanding of high-energy physics mechanisms." He appeared in the 2013 documentary film '' Particle Fever'', about the work of the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundr ...

. He is a member of the U. S.

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

Work

Baryogenesis In physical cosmology, baryogenesis (also known as baryosynthesis) is the physical process that is hypothesized to have taken place during the Big Bang, early universe to produce baryonic asymmetry, i.e. the imbalance of matter (baryons) and anti ...

at the GUT scale * Early work on

technicolor Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films running through a special ...

* Early work on soft supersymmetry breaking and

Gauge coupling unification 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 ...

in the MSSM * Moduli-mediated millimeter scale forces * "ADD model" of

s, with Nima Arkani-Hamed and Gia Dvali *

Split supersymmetry In particle physics, split supersymmetry is a proposal for physics beyond the Standard Model. History It was proposed separately in three papers. The first by James Wells in June 2003 in a more modest form that mildly relaxed the assumption abo ...

References

External links

Papers
in the

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

database.
Faculty page
at Stanford. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dimopoulos, Savas 1952 births People associated with CERN Greek academics Greek emigrants to the United States 20th-century Greek physicists Constantinopolitan Greeks Harvard University staff J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics recipients Living people Particle physicists Scientists from Istanbul Stanford University Department of Physics faculty Turkish people of Greek descent University of Chicago alumni University of Houston alumni University of Michigan alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Scientists from Athens Academics from Istanbul