Prize Recipient

Giovanni Jona-Lasinio
University of Rome

Citation:

"For contributions to the interaction between statistical mechanics, field theory and the theory of elementary particles, including spontaneous symmetry breaking, critical phenomena and a general theory of dissipative systems."

Background:

Giovanni Jona-Lasinio graduated in physics at the University of Rome in 1956. He then became a researcher at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and an assistant professor in the physics department of the University of Rome. He was nominated full professor at the University of Padua in 1970 and he returned to the University of Rome in 1974 where he is currently professor emeritus. He has spent several years abroad visiting the University of Chicago, CERN, MIT, IHES and the Universite' Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

He is most widely known for having constructed with Yoichiro Nambu the first model in elementary particle physics with spontaneous symmetry breaking (NJL model), for the early introduction (1969) with Carlo Di Castro of the field-theoretic renormalization group in the study of critical phenomena and for having developed recently a theory of stationary states far from equilibrium, going for the first time beyond the near equilibrium theory of Onsager. He is also known for his mathematical contributions to the theory of stochastic processes and their applications in physics.

He is a member of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. In Italy he has been awarded the Feltrinelli National Prize. For several years he has been the scientific director of large projects in theoretical and mathematical physics financed by the Ministry of Research of Italy. He has served in scientific committees of the Universite' Pierre et Marie Curie and of the University of Geneva. He is presently member of the Comite' de Programmation Scientifique of the Institut Henri Poincare' in Paris.

Selection Committee:

Joel Lebowitz, Chair; D.R. Morrison; M. Aizenman; G. Horowitz; C.K. Zachos