Vietnamese physics professor wins 2018 Dirac Medal
Washington DC (VNA) – Vietnamese Professor
Dam Thanh Son of the University of Chicago was recently named one the three
winners of the 2018 Dirac Medal and Prize by International Centre for
Theoretical Physics (ICTP).
Son and the two others winners – Subir
Sachdev of Harvard University and Xiao-Gang Wen of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology – received the honour for their independent contributions toward
understanding novel phases in strongly interacting many-body systems,
introducing original cross-disciplinary techniques.
All three winners study how quantum
mechanics affects large groups of particles, known as many-body systems.
In its announcement of the laureates, the
ICTP wrote that Son was the first to understand that gauge/gravity duality
could be used to address basic questions in strongly interacting many-body
problems.
ICTP's Dirac Medal, first awarded in 1985,
is given in honor of Paul Dirac, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th
century. It is awarded annually on Dirac's birthday, August 8, to scientists
who have made significant contributions to theoretical physics.
Dam Thanh Son was born in Hanoi to a pharmacy-professor
father and a biochemistry-associate-professor mother.
In 1984, he won a gold medal in his first
time competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad at the age of 15. A
year later, Son went to Moscow, Russia, to study physics at the Lomonosov
Moscow State University.
Talking about his decision to study physics
instead of maths, Son mentioned the impact of his uncle who was a teacher, Dam
Trung Don, who guided the Vietnamese national physics team for years, and his
growing love and interest for the science.
Son received his Ph.D. at the Institute for
Nuclear Research in Moscow in 1995, at 25.
In his later life, he moved to the US. He
subsequently held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Washington and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a faculty appointment at
Columbia University. He was also a fellow at the RIKEN Brookhaven National
Laboratory Research Center.
Since 2002, he has served as a senior fellow
at the Institute for Nuclear Theory and also held an appointment as a professor
of physics at the University of Washington.
In 2012, he became the 19th person to hold a
University Professorship at the University of Chicago.
Son gained international prominence for his
application of ideas from string theory to the understanding of nuclear matter
under high temperature and high density. The scientist is the author or
co-author of more than 100 scholarly publications.
The physicist has returned to Vietnam on
many occasions to attend the “Meet Vietnam” programme, which is organised by
the Meeting Vietnam Science Association and features various international
workshops and training courses on science. He has also joined the panel and
organising boards of several mathematics and physics competitions in
Vietnam.-VNA