Francesco Calogero (born 6 February 1935) is an Italian

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

, active in the community of scientists concerned with

nuclear disarmament 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 ...

Biography

Born on 6 February 1935, he is the son of the philosopher Guido Calogero. After his father was sentenced to ''national exile'' by fascist police, Francesco Calogero spent more than one year (1942) in Scanno, a small Italian village. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Calogero graduated "laurea in fisica" cum laude at

University of Rome La Sapienza The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

, in February 1958. He became Professor of Theoretical Physics, in the same university in 1976.

Physics research

Calogero's scientific publications in English include five books and over 400 papers (about half with co-authors). His main research concerns

integrable In mathematics, integrability is a property of certain dynamical systems. While there are several distinct formal definitions, informally speaking, an integrable system is a dynamical system with sufficiently many conserved quantities, or first ...

many-body The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be used to provid ...

problems. Several solvable many-body models and nonlinear evolution partial differential equations (PDEs) are named after Calogero in the mathematical physics literature. He also formulated the Calogero conjecture that quantum behavior is caused by the stochastic component of the local gravitational field due to the chaotic component of the motion of all particles of the Universe due to their mutual gravitational interaction. He also introduced a novel differential algorithm to evaluate all the zeros of any generic polynomial of arbitrary degree . Calogero, “Novel differential algorithm to evaluate all the zeros of any generic polynomial”, J. Nonlinear Math. Phys. 24, 469-472 (2017). DOI: 10.1080/14029251.2017.1375685 For his profound contributions to the field of exactly solvable models in statistical mechanics and

many-body physics The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be used to provid ...

, Calogero was a co-recipient of the American Physical Society's 2019

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 20 ...

, alongside T. Bill Sutherland and Michel Gaudin. In 2019 he accepted from the President of the Italian Republic

Sergio Mattarella Sergio Mattarella (; born 23 July 1941) is an Italian politician, jurist, academic and lawyer who has served as the president of Italy since 2015. A Christian leftist politician, Mattarella was a leading member of the Christian Democracy par ...

the "Prize of the President of the Italian Republic", awarded in alternate years to every second year to a scientist and a humanist by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the main Italian Academy.

Peace activism

Calogero served as Secretary-General of

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is an international organization that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and to seek solutions to global security threats. It was f ...

from 1989 to 1997, and from 1997 to 2002 as chair of the Pugwash Council, of which he still is an "ex-officio" member. He published (in Italian and English---some with co-authors) nearly 400 papers and several books on world affairs. He was a member of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute from 1982 to 1992. He accepted on behalf of Pugwash the 1995

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolog ...

, jointly awarded to Pugwash and to

Joseph Rotblat Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish and British physicist. During World War II he worked on Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project, but left the Los Alamos Laboratory on grounds of conscience after it became ...

(Oslo, 10 December 1995)..

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calogero, Francesco 1935 births Living people 20th-century Italian physicists Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

Biography

Physics research

Peace activism

See also

References