Luciano Maiani

Luciano Maiani
Luciano Maiani

Luciano Maiani (born 16 July 1941 in Rome) is a San Marino citizen physicist best known for his prediction of the charm quark with Sheldon Lee Glashow and John Iliopoulos (the "GIM mechanism").

Contents

Academic history

In 1964 Luciano Maiani received his degree in physics and he became a research associate at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Italy. During that same year he collaborated with R. Gatto's Theoretical Physics group at the University of Florence. He crossed the pond in 1969 to do a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard's Lyman Laboratory of Physics. In 1976 Maiani became a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome, however he traveled widely during this period, holding visiting professorships at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris (1977) and CERN (1979–1980 and 1985–1986). Maiani also took an interest in the direction of particle physics research start on CERN's Scientific Policy Committee from 1984 to 1991. Then in 1993 he became President of Italy's Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). From 1993 to 1996 Maiani served as a scientific delegate in CERN Council and then as that council's president in 1997. Thereafter he became Director General of CERN, serving from 1 January 1999 through the end of 2003. From 1995-1997 Maiani chaired the Italian Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, Fondo Ricerca Applicata. At the end of 2007 he was proposed as President of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, but his nomination was suspended temporally after he signed a letter criticizing the rector of 'La Sapienza' University in Rome, who invited the Pope Benedict XVI to give a Lectio Magistralis in 2008.[1] However he became the President of CNR since 2008.

Luciano Maiani has authored over 100 scientific publications on the theory of elementary particles often with several co-authors. In 1970 he predicted the charmed quark in a paper with Glashow and Iliopoulos which was later discovered at SLAC and Brookhaven in 1974 and led to a Nobel for the discoverers. Working with Guido Altarelli in 1974 they explained that the observed octet enhancement in weak non-leptonic decays was due to a leading gluon exchange effect in quantum chromodynamics. They later extended this effect to describe the weak non-leptonic decays of charm and bottom quarks as well and also produced a parton model description of heavy flavor weak decays. In 1976 Maiani analyzed the of CP violation in the six-quark theory and predicted the very small electric dipole moment of the neutron. In the 1980s he started using the numerical simulation of lattice QCD and this led to the first prediction of the decay constant of pseudoscalar charmed mesons and of B mesons. A proponent of Supersymmetry, Maiani once said that the search for it was "primary goal of modern particle physics".[2] He has not confined his interest to the theoretical side of physics either, with involvement in ALPI, EUROBALL, DAFNE, VIRGO and the LHC.

Awards

  • 1979 Matteucci Medal, Accademia Nazionale dei XL
  • 1987 Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society
  • 1996 Doctor honoris causa, Université de la Méditerranée, Aix-Marseille
  • 2007 Dirac Medal, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
  • 2010 Doctor honoris causa, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, México

See also

  • GIM mechanism

References

Preceded by
Christopher Llewellyn Smith
CERN Director General
1999 – 2003
Succeeded by
Robert Aymar

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  • Luciano Maiani — (* 16. Juli 1941 in Rom) ist ein italienischer Physiker. Er erhielt 1964 sein Diplom in Physik. 1970 begründete er zusammen mit Sheldon Lee Glashow und John Iliopoulos den sogenannten GIM Mechanismus, welcher die Existenz des Charm Quarks… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Luciano Maiani — (né le 16 juillet 1941 à Rome) est un physicien italien. Biographie Cette section est vide, insuffisamment détaillée ou incomplète. Votre aide est la bienvenue ! Luciano Maiani a été directeur général du CERN de 1999 à 2003 et est… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Maiani — Luciano Maiani (* 16. Juli 1941 in Rom) ist ein italienischer Physiker. Er erhielt 1964 sein Diplom in Physik. 1970 begründete er zusammen mit Sheldon Lee Glashow und John Iliopoulos den sogenannten GIM Mechanismus, welcher die Existenz des Charm …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Luciano (Vorname) — Luciano ist ein italienischer, spanischer und portugiesischer männlicher Vorname.[1][2] Die französische Form des Vornamens ist Lucien; zu Herkunft und Bedeutung des Namens siehe dort. Bekannte Namensträger Luciano Benetton (* 1935), Vorsitzender …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Iliopoulos — In diesem Artikel oder Abschnitt fehlen folgende wichtige Informationen: Jahreszahlen: Promotion, Habilitation, Professuren, Institutsdirektor; d.h. Biografie ist unvollständig. Du kannst Wikipedia helfen, indem du sie recherchierst und einfügst …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Jean Iliopoulos — In diesem Artikel oder Abschnitt fehlen folgende wichtige Informationen: Jahreszahlen: Promotion, Habilitation, Professuren, Institutsdirektor; d.h. Biografie ist unvollständig. Du kannst Wikipedia helfen, indem du sie recherchierst und einfügst …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Charm quark — Composition Elementary particle Statistics Fermionic Generation Second Interactions Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic force, Gravity Symbol …   Wikipedia

  • Matteucci Medal — The Matteucci Medal was established to award physicists for their fundamental contributions. Under an Italian Royal Decree dated July 10, 1870, the Italian Society of Sciences was authorized to receive a donation from Carlo Matteucci for the… …   Wikipedia

  • Anti-Beauty-Quark — Ein Proton, bestehend aus zwei up Quarks und einem down Quark Quarks (kwɔrk, kwɑːk oder kwɑːrk) sind die elementaren Bestandteile (Elementarteilchen), aus denen man sich …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Anti-Bottom-Quark — Ein Proton, bestehend aus zwei up Quarks und einem down Quark Quarks (kwɔrk, kwɑːk oder kwɑːrk) sind die elementaren Bestandteile (Elementarteilchen), aus denen man sich …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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