Costas Christou Kounnas (Κώστας Χρήστου Κουννάς, 23 January 1952 – 21 January 2022) was a Cypriot theoretical physicist, known for his research on

string theory In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...

supersymmetry In a supersymmetric theory the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical. In theoretical and mathematical physics, any theory with this property has the principle of supersymmetry (SUSY). Dozens of supersymmetric theories e ...

, supergravity, GUTs, and

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

Biography

Kounnas born in

Famagusta Famagusta ( , ; el, Αμμόχωστος, Ammóchostos, ; tr, Gazimağusa or ) is a city on the east coast of Geography of Cyprus, Cyprus. It is located east of Nicosia District, Nicosia and possesses the deepest harbour of the island. Duri ...

. After graduating in 1969 from Famagusta's Greek High School for Boys, he graduated with honors from the School of Physics and Mathematics of the University of Athens. With a scholarship from the French government, he became in 1975 a graduate student at the ENS Paris, where he received his doctorate in 1981. While studying in Paris he married the Famagusta-native Kakia Alexandrou. The couple's son is Christian Kounnas. Costas Kounnas then worked at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

(1982 to 1984) and the University of California, Berkeley (1984 to 1987) before returning to the ENS in 1987 as Research Director of the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

. From 1992 to 1999 he was a staff member in the Theory Division of CERN. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and Harvard University. In 1987, with Ignatios Antoniadis and Constantin Bachas, he developed superstring models in four dimensions. Their research initiated much further research in string theory. He was involved in elucidating the properties of supergravity and their influence on and relationship to string theory. He also worked on string cosmology. Kounnas received in 1995 the

Paul Langevin Prize The ''prix Paul-Langevin'' is a prize created in 1956 and named in honor of Paul Langevin. It has been awarded each year since 1957 by the ''Société française de physique'' (SFP). The prize honors French physicists for work in theoretical physic ...

and in 2013 the Gay-Lussac-Humboldt Prize. He received a

Humboldt Research Award The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

for the academic year 2014–2015, during which he collaborated with

Dieter Lüst Dieter Lüst (born 21 September 1956 in Chicago) is a German physicist, full professor for mathematical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich since 2004 and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. His research ...

at the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

. Over many years, Kounnas made important contributions to establishing and developing the scientific meetings at EISA's Corfu Summer Institute. (See

Corfu Corfu (, ) or Kerkyra ( el, Κέρκυρα, Kérkyra, , ; ; la, Corcyra.) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the margin of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The isl ...

Selected publications

*with E. G. Floratos, R. Lacaze: ''Higher order QCD effects in inclusive annihilation and deep inelastic scattering,'' Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 192, 1981, pp. 417–462 (over 400 citations) *with Eugène Cremmer,

Sergio Ferrara Sergio Ferrara (born May 2, 1945) is an Italian physicist working on theoretical physics of elementary particles and mathematical physics. He is renowned for the discovery of theories introducing supersymmetry as a symmetry of elementary particles ...

, Dimitri Nanopoulos: ''Naturally vanishing cosmological constant in N= 1 supergravity'', Phys. Lett. B, vol. 133, 1983, pp. 61–66 (over 1000 citations) *with

John Ellis John Ellis may refer to: Academics *John Ellis (scrivener) (1698–1791), English political writer *John Ellis (naturalist) (1710–1776), English botanical illustrator *John Ellis (physicist, born 1946), British theoretical physicist at CERN * Jo ...

, D. V. Nanopoulos: ''No-scale supersymmetric GUTs'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 247, 1984, pp. 373–395 (over 650 citations) *with J. Ellis, D. V. Nanopoulos: ''Phenomenological SU (1, 1) supergravity'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 241, 1984, pp. 406–428 (over 500 citations) *with A. B. Lahanas, D. V. Nanopoulos, M. Quirós: ''Low-energy behaviour of realistic locally-supersymmetric grand unified theories'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 236, 1984, pp. 438–466 (over 450 citations) *with E. Cremmer, A. Van Proeyen, J. P. Derendinger, S. Ferrara: B. de Wit, L. Girardello: ''Vector multiplets coupled to N= 2 supergravity: super-Higgs effect, flat potentials and geometric structure,'' Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 250, 1985, pp. 385–426 (over 400 citations) *with S. Ferrara, M. Porrati: ''General dimensional reduction of ten-dimensional supergravity and superstring'', Phys. Lett. B, vol. 181, 1986, pp. 263–268 *with I. Antoniadis, C. Bachas: ''Four-dimensional Superstrings''. In: ''Nucl. Phys. B'', vol. 289, 1987, pp. 87–108 (over 1000 citations) *mit M. Porrati: ''Spontaneous supersymmetry breaking in string theory'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 310, 1988, pp. 355–370 (over 300 citations) *with S. Ferrara, M. Porrati, F. Zwirner: ''Superstrings with spontaneously broken supersymmetry and their effective theories'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 318, 1989, pp. 75–105 (over 350 citations) *with J. P. Derendinger, S. Ferrara, F. Zwirner: ''On loop corrections to string effective field theories: field-dependent gauge couplings and σ-model anomalies'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 372, 1992, pp. 145–188 (over 400 citations) *with S. Ferrara, F. Zwirner: ''Mass formulae and natural hierarchy in string effective supergravities'', Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 429, 1994, pp. 589–625 *with Nicolaos Toumbas: ''Aspects of String Cosmology'', Corfu Summer Institute 2012
arxiv.org preprint

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kounnas, Costas 1952 births 2022 deaths 20th-century physicists 21st-century physicists String theorists Theoretical physicists Cosmologists École Normale Supérieure alumni French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists People associated with CERN Greek Cypriots People from Famagusta