Sergio Fubini (December 31, 1928 – January 6, 2005) was an Italian theoretical physicist. He was one of the pioneers of string theory. He was engaged in peace activism in the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

Biography

Fubini was born 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 ...

. In 1938, he fled the country as a politically persecuted Jew to Switzerland. In 1945, he attended the Lycée in Turin, where he studied physics and in 1950 graduated "cum laude." Afterwards, he was an assistant in Turin. From 1954 to 1957, he was in the USA. From 1958 to 1967, he was at CERN in

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 ...

. In 1959, he became a professor for nuclear physics at

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...

. In 1961, he became a professor for theoretical physics at

University of Turin The University of Turin ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an imp ...

. From 1968 to 1973, he was at MIT, but taught summer courses in Turin. He went back to CERN in 1973 and was from 1971 to 1980 a member of the advisory board and had an important role in planning the

Large Electron Positron Collider Large means of great size. Large may also refer to: Mathematics * Arbitrarily large, a phrase in mathematics * Large cardinal, a property of certain transfinite numbers * Large category, a category with a proper class of objects and morphisms ...

(LEP) as well as in discussions for the construction of the Middle East's Synchrotron,

SESAME Sesame ( or ; ''Sesamum indicum'') is a flowering plant in the genus '' Sesamum'', also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is c ...

. At MIT, he was with

Gabriele Veneziano Gabriele Veneziano (; ; born 7 September 1942) is an Italian theoretical physicist widely considered the father of string theory. He has conducted most of his scientific activities at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and held the Chair of Elementar ...

Emilio Del Giudice Emilio Del Giudice (1 January 1940 – 31 January 2014) was an Italian theoretical physicist who worked in the field of condensed matter. Pioneer of string theory in the early 1970s, later on he became better known for his work with Giulia ...

and Paolo Di Vecchia at the center of an active school of theoretical physicist with close connections to Italy (with one of the Italian INFN and MIT financed "Bruno Rossi" exchange programs). He and his co-workers did fundamental work in string theory. Other well-known MIT colleagues at that time were Victor Weisskopf (who was recruited by Fubini to MIT),

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic inter ...

and Roman Jackiw. From 1994 to 2001, he was a professor in Turin. Fubini worked in the 1960s on current algebras and S-matrix theory ( Regge trajectories among other things), in particular on their field-theoretical foundations. In the 1970s, he was with his MIT colleagues and pupils Gabriele Veneziano, Emilio Del Giudice and Paolo Di Vecchia one of the pioneers of string theory (the team introduced the so-called DDF states). He worked in the 1970s on other classical solutions of Yang–Mills equations and conformally invariant quantum field theory. Fubini died in 2005 in

Nyon Nyon (; outdated German: or ; outdated Italian: , ) is a municipality in Nyon District in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located some 25 kilometers north east of Geneva's city centre, and since the 1970s it has become part of the G ...

. He married Marina Colombo in 1956 and had a daughter with her.

Honors

Fubini received the

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman. As of 2 ...

in 1968 and received an honorary doctorate from the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...

References

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 ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fubini, Sergio 1928 births 2005 deaths People associated with CERN 20th-century Italian Jews Italian string theorists Jewish physicists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Scientists from Turin University of Padua faculty University of Turin faculty Jews who emigrated to escape Nazism

Biography

Honors

References

External links