Prize Recipient

Daniel Jafferis
Harvard University

Citation:

"For the construction and study of three-dimensional supersymmetric quantum field theories."

Background:

Daniel Louis Jafferis is a Five-Year Post-Doctoral Fellow in Physics at Harvard University. He was home-schooled before matriculating at Yale University at the age of 14. He received his B.S. in physics and in mathematics from Yale in 2001, and his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 2007. Jafferis was a recipient of a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. He did postdoctoral work at Rutgers University, became a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2010, and assumed his current position at Harvard in March 2011.

Jafferis's research has focused on string theory, supersymmetric quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. He was one of the discoverers of the low energy three dimensional superconformal Chern-Simons-matter theory describing multiple M2 branes, which led to a new concrete arena for the gauge-gravity correspondence. His work on supersymmetric quantum field theories in three dimensions involved finding an exact method for determining the dimensions of all chiral primary operators in strongly coupled conformal field theories, and led to a conjecture for a quantity that measures the number of degrees of freedom in interacting quantum field theories in three dimensions.

Selection Committee:

Kevin Pitts, Chair; L. Orr; S. Dawson; H. Schellman; J. Richman; D. Akerib; N. Seiberg