Prize Recipient

Nikita Nekrasov
Simons Center for Geometry and Physics and Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University

"For the elegant application of powerful mathematical techniques to extract exact results for quantum field theories, as well as shedding light on integrable systems and non-commutative geometry."

A French-Russian national, Nekrasov grew up in Russia, where he became hooked on string theory and mathematical physics after reading a Scientific American article by Prof. Michael Green (recipient of 2002 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics). He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. After briefly returning to Princeton University as a Dicke Fellow, he became professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France. Since 2013 he has been a professor at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics and Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University in New York. His research is at the interface of mathematics and theoretical physics. In particular, he is applying topology to compute exact correlation functions in quantum field theory. His results explain some features of the strong force while connecting quantum field theory to integrable systems.

Hal Tasaki (Chair), Cumrun Vafa, Nicolai Reshetikhin, Antti Kupiainen, Simone Warzel