Carlo Maria Becchi (; born 20 October 1939) is an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...

. Becchi studied at the

University of Genoa The University of Genoa, known also with the acronym UniGe ( it, Università di Genova), is one of the largest universities in Italy. It is located in the city of Genoa and regional Metropolitan City of Genoa, on the Italian Riviera in the Liguri ...

, where he received his university degree in physics in 1962. In 1976, he became full professor for theoretical physics at the

. Twice (first in 1983), he was chairman of the physics faculty there. From 1997 to 2003 he was the chairman of the theory committee of the

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare The Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN; "National Institute for Nuclear Physics") is the coordinating institution for nuclear, particle, theoretical and astroparticle physics in Italy. History INFN was founded on 8 August 1951, to furt ...

(INFN). Becchi began by looking into the

photoelectric effect The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, and solid st ...

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

(topic of his thesis). In the 1960s he worked on

quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly o ...

s and the associated unitary symmetries. Since 1971 he has done work on

renormalization Renormalization is a collection of techniques in quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, that are used to treat infinities arising in calculated quantities by altering v ...

theory. Becchi became known for his development around 1975 with

Raymond Stora Raymond Félix Stora (18 September 1930 – 20 July 2015) was a French theoretical physicist. He was a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), as well as a member of CERN's theory group. His work focused ...

and

Alain Rouet Alain may refer to: People * Alain (given name), common given name, including list of persons and fictional characters with the name * Alain (surname) * "Alain", a pseudonym for cartoonist Daniel Brustlein * Alain, a standard author abbreviation u ...

of the

BRST formalism BRST may refer to: * BRST Films, a Serbian video production company * BRST algorithm, an optimization algorithm suitable for finding the global optimum of black box functions * BRST quantization in Yang-Mills theories, a way to quantize a gauge-sym ...

, which is a method of quantization of systems with secondary conditions like

gauge theory In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian (and hence the dynamics of the system itself) does not change (is invariant) under local transformations according to certain smooth families of operations (Lie groups) ...

. In 2009 as recognition for the BRST formalism, he received the

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman. As of 2010 ...

with Stora, Rouet, and Igor Tyutin. Since 1991 he is supervisory editor of the journal ''

Nuclear Physics B Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: * Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics * Nuclear space *Nuclea ...

''.

Selected publications

* with Giovanni Ridolfi: ''Introduction to relativistic processes and the standard model of electroweak interactions'', Springer 2005 * with Rouet, Stora: ''The Abelian Higgs-Kibble-Model. Unitarity of the S-Operator'', ''Physics Letters B'', Vol.52, 1974, p. 344

References

External links

Homepage at the University of Genova with lecture texts and publications list
* Carlo Becchi and Camillo Imbimbo
Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin symmetry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Becchi, Carlo 20th-century Italian physicists 1939 births Living people Academic staff of the University of Genoa Mathematical physicists 21st-century Italian physicists