Laureates

CERN, Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University and École Normale Supérieure

2014 New Horizons in Physics Prize

For developing new techniques in conformal field theory, reviving the conformal bootstrap program for constraining the spectrum of operators and the structure constants in 3D and 4D CFT’s.

Comments

I am extremely lucky to have been taught and inspired by great scientists. In Samara, my first steps in mathematics were nurtured by Gennadiy Kalyabin. In Moscow, Oleg Besov took me under his wing, advising my extracurricular readings and later my Master's thesis. Elias Stein was my PhD thesis advisor at the Princeton Mathematics Department, remaining a good friend even when my research interests moved to theoretical physics. It was Alexander Polyakov who influenced me most at Princeton, passing me on his wisdom in countless 6 p.m. telephone calls. But my education remained incomplete until my Italian maestro Riccardo Barbieri made me connect theoretical knowledge with the experimentally relevant questions. To all these people I am deeply indebted and grateful. I would also like to mention and to thank sincerely my collaborator Riccardo Rattazzi, with whom in August 2006 at CERN I first started discussing the ideas which eventually led to this prize. I am sending my gratitude and affection to my parents Sergey Pavlovich Rychkov and Tatiana Vyacheslavovna Rychkova, who live in Samara, to thank them for all their love and support. I can't find proper English words to thank my wife Luisa: Sei tutto per me!