Kibble Tom Kibble – författare

Mathematical physics has made enormous strides over the past few decades, with the emergence of many new disciplines and with revolutionary advances in old disciplines. One of the especially interesting features is the link between developments in mathematical physics and in pure mathematics. Many of the exciting advances in mathematics owe their origin to mathematical physics — superstring theory, for example, has led to remarkable progress in geometry — while very pure mathematics, such as number theory, has found unexpected applications.The beginning of a new millennium is an appropriate time to survey the present state of the field and look forward to likely advances in the future. In this book, leading experts give personal views on their subjects and on the wider field of mathematical physics. The topics covered range widely over the whole field, from quantum field theory to turbulence, from the classical three-body problem to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.

This is a selection from over 250 papers published by Abdus Salam. Professor Salam has been Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London and Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, for which he was largely responsible for creating. He is one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of his generation and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for his work on the unification of electromagnetic and weak interactions. He is well known for his deep interest in the development of scientific research in the third world (to which ICTP is devoted) and has taken a leading part in setting up the Third World Academy. His research work has ranged widely over quantum field theory and all aspects of the theory of elementary particles and more recently into other fields, including high-temperature superconductivity and theoretical biology. The papers selected represent a cross section of his work covering the entire period of 50 years from his student days to the present.

The Abdus Salam Memorial Meeting was held from the 19th to the 22nd of November, 1997 on the first anniversary of the death of Prof Abdus Salam, Nobel laureate and Founder-Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. It was an opportunity for many of his colleagues and students to pay homage to him.This invaluable volume, comprising the papers presented at the meeting, reflects the long-lasting passion of Prof Salam for the theory of the fundamental forces. Most of the contributions are concerned with recent developments in the theory of superstrings, including duality, D-branes and related topics.