ICTP Prize Winner 2010

The 2010 ICTP Prize in honour of Nicola Cabibbo, is awarded to Shiraz Minwalla, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India.

Shiraz Minwalla is recognised for his many outstanding contributions in the field of String theory and Gauge/Gravity duality that have influenced a great deal of research in many areas. Some of his outstanding contributions are: his  works on ultraviolet/infrared mixing in non-commutative field theories, non-commutative solitons, gauge/string theory duality in the Penrose limit, closed string tachyon condensation, Hagedorn like phase transition in weakly coupled Yang-Mills theories, relating plasma balls in large N gauge theories to black holes in the gravity duals and his most recent works on obtaining equations of Nonlinear fluid dynamics in 3+1 dimensions from Einstein's equation for black-branes in 5-dimensional anti-de-Sitter space as well as a study of weak field black hole formation in asymptotically anti-de-Sitter spacetimes and its relation to the thermalization process in the dual conformal field theory.

Nicola Cabibbo (1935 - 2010) was one of the greatest theoretical high energy physicists, with many ground-breaking contributions to the field. In particular, Cabibbo's discovery of mixing in weak interactions has established the existence of a new class of physical constants, whose first example is the Cabibbo angle. This angle determines the mixing of strange quarks with non-strange quarks and has been measured experimentally. Cabibbo's work on quark mixing was fundamental for the development of unified theories of weak and electromagnetic interactions, as well as for the clarification of the interrelation between different quark species. With the discovery of a third family of quarks and leptons, quark mixing led to the understanding of the phenomenon of CP violation. Cabibbo was also a key player since the early days of ICTP and was the chair of the ICTP Scientific Council.