Juan Maldacena, Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study (USA) and a member of the International Advisory Board of the ICTS-TIFR, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Richard E. Prange Prize and Lectureship in Condensed Matter Theory and Related Areas.
“Maldacena is most known for his 1997 solo theoretical discovery of a deep connection between gauge theories, which describe the world of particle physics at the microscopic scale, and quantum gravity, which describes the physics of gravitational forces holding the universe together. This famous Maldacena gauge-gravity (or AdS/CFT) duality, arguably the most important theoretical physics result of the last 30 years, has remained a topic of great fundamental interest in particle physics, string theory, gravity, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, and is one of the most actively-studied topics in theoretical physics. In particular, Maldacena conjectured that certain strongly-interacting quantum field theories are equivalent to certain weakly-interacting theories of gravity, leading to new insights in all of physics. This work of Maldacena, receiving in excess of 10,000 citations, is among the most cited papers in all of science over the last 20 years.” - said the Department of Physics, University of Maryland.
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