Facultad de Ciencias: Biografía de Maiani

Biografía de Luciano Maiani

Tomada de APS Centenial Meeting

Luciano Maiani
International Cooperation at CERN

Born in Roma, Italy, July 16, 1941

1964 Degree in Physics

1964 Research staff at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Roma

1964 Co-operation with Prof. R. Gatto's group, in the field of Theoretical Physics, University of Florence

1969 Post-Doctoral fellow, the Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University

1976-1984 Professor of Institutions of Theoretical Physics, University of Roma "La Sapienza"

1977 Visiting Professor, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris

1979-1980 Visiting scientist, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva

1984 Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Roma "La Sapienza"

1985-1986 Visiting Scientist, CERN, Geneva

1993-1998 President of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare

1993-1996 Scientific Delegate to the CERN Council

1995-1997 Chairman, Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, Fondo Ricerca Applicata

1997 President of the CERN Council

1999-2003 Director-General of CERN

Awards:

1979 - Matteucci Medal, Accademia Nazionale dei XL

1987- Prize "J.J. Sakurai" of the American Physical Society

1996 - Laurea honoris causa, Université de la Mediterranée, Aix-Marseille

1998 - Laurea honoris causa, University of St. Petersburg

Memberships:

1988 - Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma, Italy

1991 - Fellow, American Physical Society

1997 - Accademia Nazionale dei XL

Participation to International Committees:

1979-1983 - The Super-Proto-Synchrotron Committee, CERN, Geneva

1984-1991 - Scientific Policy Committee, CERN, Geneva

1990 - Extended Research Council, German Electronic Synchrotron at Desy, Hamburg

1992-1993 - LHC Committee, CERN, Geneva

1997- IUPAP, C11 sub-Committee

Scientific Results:

Luciano Maiani is author or co-author of over 100 scientific publications on the theory of Elementary Particles and author of several Lecture Notes and Rapporteur Talks. His most important result is the prediction of charmed particles (with S. Glashow and J. Iliopoulos, 1970). The proposal, known as Glashow-Iliopoulos-Maiani (GIM) mechanism, has been crucial to the formulation of the unified theory of the Electroweak Interactions. Charmed particles have been discovered a few years later (1976) with properties very close to those anticipated in the original GIM paper.

Other important results include:

-the explanation of the observed octet enhancement in weak non-leptonic decays as due to leading gluon exchange effect in Quantum Chromodynamics (with G. Altarelli, 1974); the effect was extended to describe weak non-leptonic decays of charmed and beauty particles as well;

-the analysis of CP violation in the six-quark theory (1976) and the prediction of a very small electric dipole moment of the neutron;

-the parton model description of heavy flavour weak decays (with N. Cabibbo, G. Altarelli, M. Corbò and G. Martinelli, 1978-79), still used to extract the weak mixing angles from inclusive semileptonic B-decays;

-bounds to the Higgs boson mass from stability considerations (with N. Cabibbo, G. Parisi and R. Petronzio, 1979);

-the first prediction of the decay constant of pseudoscalar charmed mesons, fD and fDs, with numerical simulation of lattice QCD (with M.B. Gavela, G. Martinelli, O. Pene, S. Petrarca, 1988) and of B-mesons, using the static approximation of the lattice (with C.R. Allton, C.T. Sachrajda, V. Lubicz and G. Martinelli, 1991); the value of fDs, is one of the few "predictions" of lattice QCD, and is consistent with the latest experimental determinations;

-has clarified the problem of the non perturbative formulation of chiral lattice gauge theories (with G.C. Rossi and M.Testa, 1989-1991), pointing out a still unresolved problem of naturalness of the chiral gauge symmetry;

-has been among the first (lecture notes at the Gif-sur-Yvette School, 1980) to point out the need of softly broken supersymmetry to stabilize against quantum corrections the very large difference between the electroweak and the grand unification mass scale (or the Planck mass scale). The search of supersymmetry at present (LEP, Tevatron) and future (LHC) accelerators is a primary goal of modern particle physics.

Research Management:

President of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare from February 1993 to June 1998. INFN is an Institution which supports research in nuclear, particle and astroparticle physics, with about 2000 staff members (researchers, administrators, engineers, technicians) and about 1000 associates (mainly university professors). The President of INFN is directly in charge of the running of the Institute, with the support of the Executive Board (4 members) and the Board of Directors (34 members).

The original INFN plan of activity for the 1994-1998 period, approved in August 1993, envisaged a total 2590 Billion lire. The scientific programme has been effectively maintained, in fact enhanced in certain parts, in spite of the severe cuts made necessary by the economic situation, which have reduced the budget of about 10% over the same period.

Major results of the years 1993-1997 include:

-the completion of the ALPI (heavy ions) accelerator in Legnaro, and the installation of EUROBALL, by a large European collaboration;

-the construction of DAFNE at Frascati (a high luminosity electron-positron collider optimized as a Kaon factory for the study of matter-antimatter symmetry violations);

-the approval and the startup of construction of VIRGO at Cascina, Pisa (a long baseline interferometer for the detection of gravitational waves, designed and built in collaboration with CNRS, France);

-the continuation and the extension of the R&D activity with Italian industry and CERN for the LHC superconducting dipoles, which has led to the successful completion of the first 10m dipole in 1994;

-the promotion of intense R&D projects with industry, to promote technology transfer from INFN activities in the fields of superconducting cavities, electronics and microelectronics, parallel computing, medical imaging, hadrontherapy.

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