ICTP Prize Winner 1995

The ICTP Prize in the field of High Energy Physics, in honour of Steven Weinberg, was awarded to Spenta Wadia from the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research Bombay, India.

Wadia is an eminent Indian scientist, whose research work in theoretical High Energy Physics has received international acclaim. He graduated in theoretical physics at the City University of New York in 1978. From 1978 to 1982 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago. During this period, he made important contributions in the study of gauge theories, both on the lattice and continuum. Particularly noteworthy are his results on large-N phase transition and the derivation of loop-equation in lattice gauge theories. He joined TIFR in 1982. Since then he has worked on a number of subjects in theoretical physics, including string theory and 2-dimensional quantum gravity. In particular, he and his collaborators were one of the first groups to propose that the Liouville mode in the non-critical strings provides an extra space-time dimension. His group was also one of the first to construct a black hole solution in 2-dimensional string theory, thereby opening the way to a new line of research, namely the study of black hole backgrounds in string theory. He and his collaborators also produced a series of interesting works in c=1 matrix models, revealing the underlying fermionic system and the related W symmetry. These works also led to bosonization of non-relativistic fermion systems in 1+1 dimension.