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Stefano Fantoni (born 4 June 1945) is an Italian theoretical
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...
, now retired from the
International School for Advanced Studies The International School for Advanced Studies (Italian: ''Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati''; SISSA) is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute in Trieste, Italy. SISSA is active in th ...
in Trieste (SISSA), still working in the fields of
nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...
and low temperature physics. The common denominator of his research was to go beyond the mean-field models in solving the so-called
many-body The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be used to provid ...
theory that occurs in quantum
Bose Bose may refer to: * Bose (crater), a lunar crater * ''Bose'' (film), a 2004 Indian Tamil film starring Srikanth and Sneha * Bose (surname), a surname (and list of people with the name) * Bose, Italy, a ''frazioni'' in Magnano, Province of Biella ...
or/and
Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...
systems, characterized by the presence of strong
correlations In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
among their components. In the seventies he has been the author, together with Sergio Rosati, of the Power Series cluster theory for strongly interacting fermions, known as FR cluster expansion, and later, of the
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 ...
Hyper Netted Chain (FHNC) integral equations to compute the FR expansion terms at all orders. Such theories have opened up the modern
many-body The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be used to provid ...
studies on strongly interacting Fermi systems, such as
nuclear matter Nuclear matter is an idealized system of interacting nucleons (protons and neutrons) that exists in several phases of exotic matter that, as of yet, are not fully established. It is ''not'' matter in an atomic nucleus, but a hypothetical sub ...
and
Quantum fluid A quantum fluid refers to any system that exhibits quantum mechanical effects at the macroscopic level such as superfluids, superconductors, ultracold atoms, etc. Typically, quantum fluids arise in situations where both quantum mechanical effects a ...
s. It is due to him and to V. R. Pandharipande and O. Benhar, the extension at all
perturbative In quantum mechanics, perturbation theory is a set of approximation schemes directly related to mathematical perturbation for describing a complicated quantum system in terms of a simpler one. The idea is to start with a simple system for wh ...
orders of the so called Correlated Basis Function (CBF) theory, originally developed by E. Feenberg, and the proof of its
renormalizability Renormalization is a collection of techniques in quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, that are used to treat infinities arising in calculated quantities by altering va ...
, as well as the first realistic calculation of the one-body
Green's Function In mathematics, a Green's function is the impulse response of an inhomogeneous linear differential operator defined on a domain with specified initial conditions or boundary conditions. This means that if \operatorname is the linear differenti ...
and the Response functions of
Nuclear matter Nuclear matter is an idealized system of interacting nucleons (protons and neutrons) that exists in several phases of exotic matter that, as of yet, are not fully established. It is ''not'' matter in an atomic nucleus, but a hypothetical sub ...
, largely used to explain the experimental results of
electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary partic ...
and
neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is a fermion (an elementary particle with spin of ) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass ...
scattering Scattering is a term used in physics to describe a wide range of physical processes where moving particles or radiation of some form, such as light or sound, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by localized non-uniformities (including ...
on heavy nuclei. Also of great importance are his studies done together with Kevin Schmidt on
Quantum Monte Carlo Quantum Monte Carlo encompasses a large family of computational methods whose common aim is the study of complex quantum systems. One of the major goals of these approaches is to provide a reliable solution (or an accurate approximation) of the ...
methods for nuclear systems, and particularly the development of the Auxiliary Field
Diffusion Monte Carlo Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) or diffusion quantum Monte Carlo is a quantum Monte Carlo method that uses a Green's function to solve the Schrödinger equation. DMC is potentially numerically exact, meaning that it can find the exact ground state ene ...
(AFDMC) method, heavily used in
nuclear Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: *Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear space * Nuclear ...
and
neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons behav ...
matter calculations.


Biography

Stefano Fantoni was born in
Taranto Taranto (, also ; ; nap, label=Tarantino dialect, Tarantino, Tarde; Latin: Tarentum; Old Italian: ''Tarento''; Ancient Greek: Τάρᾱς) is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto, serving as an ...
on 4 June 1945. He attended the high school in Livorno, graduated in Physics in 1968 from
University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
, and received his PhD degree in 1970 from the
Scuola Normale Superiore The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (commonly known in Italy as "la Normale") is a public university in Pisa and Florence, Tuscany, Italy, currently attended by about 600 undergraduate and postgraduate (PhD) students. It was founded in 1810 wi ...
. He first worked as an assistant lecturer at the
University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
from November 1970 and then as Associate Professor since 1972. In 1986 he became full professor and three-month later he was given the chair of Nuclear Physics at the University of Lecce. From 1991 to 2000 he acted as Director of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of the
International School for Advanced Studies The International School for Advanced Studies (Italian: ''Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati''; SISSA) is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute in Trieste, Italy. SISSA is active in th ...
, SISSA in
Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into pr ...
. In 2004 he was elected and nominated as SISSA Director, duty that he has covered until November 2010. Stefano Fantoni married in 1969 and has two children and two grandchildren


Research activity

Fantoni's research activity has been mainly devoted to quantum liquids of interest of
nuclear Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: *Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear space * Nuclear ...
and
condensed matter Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...
phenomena typical of low temperature physics. He started doing research during his graduation thesis in light nuclei with his first article in 1970 on 6Li. He is today among the three topmost scientists of Italian nationality in the field of theoretical Nuclear physics. The common denominator of his research was to go beyond the mean-field models in solving the so-called
many-body The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be used to provid ...
theory that occurs in quantum
Bose Bose may refer to: * Bose (crater), a lunar crater * ''Bose'' (film), a 2004 Indian Tamil film starring Srikanth and Sneha * Bose (surname), a surname (and list of people with the name) * Bose, Italy, a ''frazioni'' in Magnano, Province of Biella ...
or/and
Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...
systems, characterized by the presence of strong correlations among their components. In this context he gave four main contributions: (i) the development cluster expansion techniques, known in the literature as the Fantoni-Rosati (FR) cluster expansion, (ii) the derivation of the Fermi Hyper Netted Chain (FHNC) equations, to sum up series of cluster terms (iii) the development of Correlated Basis Function theory (CBF) and, more recently, (iv) the development of a new numerical simulation
Monte Carlo method Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be deter ...
for nuclear systems, known as Auxiliary Field
Diffusion Monte Carlo Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) or diffusion quantum Monte Carlo is a quantum Monte Carlo method that uses a Green's function to solve the Schrödinger equation. DMC is potentially numerically exact, meaning that it can find the exact ground state ene ...
(AFDMC). Fantoni founded four research groups one in
Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the ...
, a second one in
Lecce Lecce ( ); el, label=Griko, Luppìu, script=Latn; la, Lupiae; grc, Λουπίαι, translit=Loupíai), group=pron is a historic city of 95,766 inhabitants (2015) in southern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Lecce, the provinc ...
and a third one in Urbana, Illinois, all in the field of nuclear physics and a fourth one in Trieste in Condensed matter physics. He also coordinated a research group made of few Italian and foreign universities and research laboratories in the field of
nuclear astrophysics Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary part of both nuclear physics and astrophysics, involving close collaboration among researchers in various subfields of each of these fields. This includes, notably, nuclear reactions and their rates as ...
. He has been the Italian representative of nuclear physics in several international bodies dealing with future perspectives in nuclear physics and electron scattering off nuclei at intermediate energies. His research group at the
SISSA The International School for Advanced Studies (Italian: ''Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati''; SISSA) is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute in Trieste, Italy. SISSA is active in th ...
Interdisciplinary Laboratory has developed a new communication model based on the existing interconnections and inter-relations amongst communicating agents,. The SISSA model has been designed to overcome some of the deficiencies of the traditional top-down model in which communication simply flows from those who know to those who do not know. In connections with this kind of research Stefano Fantoni founded in 2005 the first PhD school in Science and Society supported by both SISSA and the
University of Milan The University of Milan ( it, Università degli Studi di Milano; la, Universitas Studiorum Mediolanensis), known colloquially as UniMi or Statale, is a public university, public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest uni ...
. Fantoni has been co-editor of the series Tessere (Cuen editing company,
Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
) (1994–1998); publisher of the e-journal JCOM from its foundation in 2004 and author of various articles in newspapers and books and of a dozen research articles on science communication.


International experience

Stefano Fantoni spent several stays abroad as visiting professor: in 1977 at the
Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, cele ...
of
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
in 1979 at the Institute fur Physik in Koln; from 1980 to 1982 and in 1984 at the Department of Physics,
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...
in 1990 at the Jefferson Laboratory (CEBAF) in Newport News, Virginia, r; in 2000 at the Theory Center Seattle (Washington). He has also been a consultant of the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
and of the
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
in the framework of INTAS program; italian delegate to the OECD Committee Megaforum Science in Nuclear Physics in 1997 and 1998; member of the Program Advisory Committee for the Jefferson Laboratory at Newport News in Virginia from 1989 to 1993, when the accelerator was still under construction and the center began to outline its strategic lines of experimental research; member and then chairman of the Program Advisory Committee of INFN laboratories in Legnaro (
Padova Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...
) in the period 1991–1996; member of the board of directors of the European Center for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and related areas (ECT*) in 1993, when it was founded in Villazzano (Trento), until 1995; during the period 2003/2009 he was member of the International Advisory Committee of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Collegium Budapest.


Evaluation and management experience

Stefano Fantoni was the founder of the
Elba Elba ( it, isola d'Elba, ; la, Ilva) is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino on the Italian mainland, and the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago. It is also part of the Arcipelago Toscano Nation ...
International Physics Center (EIPC) which he directed from 1985 to 1992. During this period EIPC acted as the Italian counterpart of the Aspen Center for Physics in Colorado, organizing conferences and workshops funded by local administration and some international research centers. In the period 1992–1993 Stefano Fantoni took part, as italian member, together with the Danish nobelist Ben Mottelson and the french scientist
Oriol Bohigas Oriol Bohigas i Guardiola (20 December 1925 – 30 November 2021) was a Spanish architect and urban planner, known for his work in the modernization of Barcelona. Early life Bohigas was born in Barcelona, Spain, on 20 December 1925 in a Catal ...
, in the Committee nominated to establish the European Centre for Theoretical Physics, ECT*. The center is still in operation in the fields of nuclear physics, astrophysics and condensed matter. From 1991 to 2000 he directed the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of SISSA, a laboratory having the mission of developing and promoting new research areas. He founded the Neuroscience sector. In 1994 he founded the School in Science Communication which he directed until 2004. He was also President of FEST, the Trieste Festival of Scientific books and journals in the years 2007 and 2008. Stefano Fantoni has been the Director of SISSA from 2004 to 2010 and member of CRUI, the association of the Rectors of the Italian universities, in the same period. His period as director has been characterized by the design and construction of the new SISSA location, a building of almost 25000mq, 150000mq able to host the whole educational and research activity of SISSA. He has been nominated as the president of the International Foundation for the Development of Freedom of Science (FIT) in
Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into pr ...
in 2008. In the same year he was nominated from the regional administration of
Friuli Venezia Giulia (man), it, Friulana (woman), it, Giuliano (man), it, Giuliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_t ...
as delegate to the commission Coordination of universities and research institutions of the
Friuli Venezia Giulia (man), it, Friulana (woman), it, Giuliano (man), it, Giuliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_t ...
. He has also been nominated as the president of the Trieste section of Alliance Francaise in 2009. Fantoni was a member of the national committee for the evaluation of the basic research projects (FIRB committee) from 2007 to 2010 and member of the national committee to evaluate scientific museums and projects on popularization of science from 1995 to 1997 and from 2009 to 2010. He has been the first President of ANVUR (the Italian Agency for the evaluation of the university and of the research) (2011–2016). He has been the Champion of EuroScience Open Forum ( ESOF), in occasion of the nomination of
Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into pr ...
as European City of Science for the year 2020. He is at present on the board of the EuroScience committee.


Director of SISSA


Champion of ESOF 2020


Prizes and awards

For his contributions to theoretical nuclear physics and for the development of FHNC theory he has awarded the prestigious international recognition Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal 2007. For his work in science communication, he received the 2001
Kalinga Prize The Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science is an award given by UNESCO for exceptional skill in presenting scientific ideas to lay people. It was created in 1952, following a donation from Biju Patnaik Bijayananda Patnaik (5 March ...
, awarded by
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. I ...
. He also received the Award Piazzano in 2002, to have founded and directed the Master in Science communication; in 2006, the Pirelli Internet-ional prize for the multimedia initiative Ulysses in the net of science; in 2007, the Capo d’Orlando prize for his activities in science communication.


Selected works

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


References


Bibliography

* * *


External links


Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (SNS)

International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fantoni, Stefano 20th-century Italian physicists Living people 1945 births People from Taranto Kalinga Prize recipients 21st-century Italian physicists