Edward Witten is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions to string theory, topological quantum field theory, and various areas of mathematics. He is a professor emeritus in the school of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical physics. Witten's work has also significantly impacted pure mathematics. In 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union, for his mathematical insights in physics, such as his 1981 proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity, and his interpretation of the Jones invariants of knots as Feynman integrals. He is considered the practical founder of M-theory.
Rudolf Haag was a German theoretical physicist, who mainly dealt with fundamental questions of quantum field theory. He was one of the founders of the modern formulation of quantum field theory and he identified the formal structure in terms of the principle of locality and local observables. He also made important advances in the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics.
John David Jackson was a Canadian–American theoretical physicist. He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a faculty senior scientist emeritus at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Barry Martin Simon is an American mathematical physicist and was the IBM professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech, known for his prolific contributions in spectral theory, functional analysis, and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, including the connections to atomic and molecular physics. He has authored more than 400 publications on mathematics and physics.
Arthur Michael Jaffe is an American mathematical physicist at Harvard University, where in 1985 he succeeded George Mackey as the Landon T. Clay Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Science.
In mathematical physics, Gleason's theorem shows that the rule one uses to calculate probabilities in quantum physics, the Born rule, can be derived from the usual mathematical representation of measurements in quantum physics together with the assumption of non-contextuality. Andrew M. Gleason first proved the theorem in 1957, answering a question posed by George W. Mackey, an accomplishment that was historically significant for the role it played in showing that wide classes of hidden-variable theories are inconsistent with quantum physics. Multiple variations have been proven in the years since. Gleason's theorem is of particular importance for the field of quantum logic and its attempt to find a minimal set of mathematical axioms for quantum theory.
Kalyanapuram Rangachari Parthasarathy was an Indian statistician who was professor emeritus at the Indian Statistical Institute and a pioneer of quantum stochastic calculus. Parthasarathy was the recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Mathematical Science in 1977 and the TWAS Prize in 1996.
Jürg Martin Fröhlich is a Swiss mathematician and theoretical physicist. He is best known for introducing rigorous techniques for the analysis of statistical mechanics models, in particular continuous symmetry breaking, and for pioneering the study of topological phases of matter using low-energy effective field theories.
Huzihiro Araki was a Japanese mathematical physicist and mathematician who worked on the foundations of quantum field theory, on quantum statistical mechanics, and on the theory of operator algebras.
Thomas C. Spencer is an American mathematical physicist, known in particular for important contributions to constructive quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, and spectral theory of random operators. He is an emeritus faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Antti Kupiainen is a Finnish mathematical physicist.
Sergio Doplicher is an Italian mathematical physicist, who mainly dealt with the mathematical foundations of quantum field theory and quantum gravity.
Nilanjana Datta is an Indian-born British mathematician. She is a Professor in Quantum Information Theory in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Pembroke College.
Gian Michele Graf is a Swiss mathematical physicist.
In mathematical physics, two-dimensional Yang–Mills theory is the special case of Yang–Mills theory in which the dimension of spacetime is taken to be two. This special case allows for a rigorously defined Yang–Mills measure, meaning that the (Euclidean) path integral can be interpreted as a measure on the set of connections modulo gauge transformations. This situation contrasts with the four-dimensional case, where a rigorous construction of the theory as a measure is currently unknown.
Giovanni Felder is a Swiss mathematical physicist and mathematician, working at ETH Zurich. He specializes in algebraic and geometric properties of integrable models of statistical mechanics and quantum field theory.
Alberto Sergio Cattaneo is an Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist, specializing in geometry related to quantum field theory and string theory.
Krzysztof Gawędzki was a Polish mathematical physicist, a graduate of the University of Warsaw and professor at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. He was primarily known for his research on quantum field theory and statistical physics. In 2022, he shared the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics with Antti Kupiainen.
In physics, stability of matter refers to the problem of showing rigorously that a large number of charged quantum particles can coexist and form macroscopic objects, like ordinary matter. The first proof was provided by Freeman Dyson and Andrew Lenard in 1967–1968, but a shorter and more conceptual proof was found later by Elliott Lieb and Walter Thirring in 1975.
Robert Schrader was a German theoretical and mathematical physicist. He is known for the Osterwalder–Schrader axioms.
