Senior Staff Member at the CERN (Geneva) and Professor of Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology at the Collège de France (Paris)
Motivation:
For his fundamental contributions to the development of the most successful ideas of theoretical physics and to the understanding of modern particle physics and field theory. In 1968 he formulated a model of hadrons, the so called “Veneziano model”, which already contains many features of string theory, one of the most active fields in theoretical physics and mathematics today. In perturbative QCD, in collaboration with Daniele Amati and Roberto Petronzio, he demonstrated the factorization of collinear divergencies, which is the basis of the parton model in hard processes, and formulated the theoretical basis of jet calculus. In non-perturbative QCD, his main contribution is the solution of the U(1) problem with the explanation of the η’ mass, the so called Veneziano-Witten formula. From 1980, Veneziano focused his main interests in non-perturbative phenomena and effective theories, producing seminal results in supersymmetry, from the structure of the vacuum to the mechanism of symmetry breaking, in string theory for processes occurring at Planckian energies, in the physics of black holes and, more recently, in pre-Big Bang cosmology. In all these subjects, the role of Gabriele Veneziano was extraordinary important and make him one of the reference figures in theoretical physics of the last decades.
University of Strasbourg – Nanostructures
Laboratoire, ISIS
Motivation:
For his pioneering work on nanostructured materials. In particular, for having discovered the mass synthesis of carbon nanotubes and the rules that govern at the atomic level the bending and folding of graphene sheets. For sparking a new research field called plasmonics that is revolutionizing what can be done with light, in particular in the field of optoelectronics, fast computing, light focusing, medical diagnostics and drug delivery. Thomas W. Ebbesen discovered that almost all the incident radiation can be transmitted very efficiently through holes, smaller than the wavelength, properly patterned in a thin sheet of metal.
