Nikita Alexandrovich Nekrasov (russian: Ники́та Алекса́ндрович Некра́сов; born 10 April 1973) is a mathematical and theoretical physicist at the

Simons Center for Geometry and Physics The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics is a center for theoretical physics and mathematics at Stony Brook University in New York. The focus of the center is mathematical physics and the interface of geometry and physics. It was founded in 20 ...

and C.N.Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York syste ...

in New York, and a Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Career

Nekrasov studied at the Moscow State 57th School in 1986–1989. He graduated with honors from the

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT; russian: Московский Физико-Технический институт, also known as PhysTech), is a public university, public research university located in Moscow Oblast, Russia. I ...

in 1995, and joined the theory division of the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics. In parallel, in 1994–1996 Nekrasov did his graduate work at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

, under the supervision of David Gross. His Ph.D. thesis on ''Four Dimensional Holomorphic Theories'' was defended in 1996. He joined Harvard Society of Fellows at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

as a Junior Fellow 1996–1999. He was then a Robert. H. Dicke Fellow at Princeton University from 1999 to 2000. In 2000 he moved to France as a permanent professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques. Since 2013, he is a full professor at the

and C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at

in New York.

Research

Nekrasov is mostly known for his work on supersymmetric gauge theory, quantum integrability, and string theory. The Nekrasov partition function, which he introduced in his 2002 paper, relates in an intricate way the instantons in gauge theory, integrable systems, and representation theory of infinite-dimensional algebras.

Honours and awards

For his discovery of noncommutative instantons together with

Albert Schwarz Albert Solomonovich Schwarz (; russian: А. С. Шварц; born June 24, 1934) is a Soviet and American mathematician and a theoretical physicist educated in the Soviet Union and now a professor at the University of California, Davis. Early li ...

in 1998, noncommutative

monopoles Monopole may refer to: * Magnetic monopole, or Dirac monopole, a hypothetical particle that may be loosely described as a magnet with only one pole * Monopole (mathematics), a connection over a principal bundle G with a section (the Higgs field) o ...

and monopole strings with David Gross in 2000 and for his work with Alexander S. Gorsky on the relations between gauge theories and many-body systems he was awarded the of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at th ...

in 2004. For his contributions to topological string theory and the

ADHM construction In mathematical physics and gauge theory, the ADHM construction or monad construction is the construction of all instantons using methods of linear algebra by Michael Atiyah, Vladimir Drinfeld, Nigel Hitchin, Yuri I. Manin in their paper "Const ...

he received the Hermann Weyl Prize in 2004. In 2008 together with Davesh Maulik, Andrei Okounkov and

Rahul Pandharipande Rahul Pandharipande (born 1969) is a mathematician who is currently a professor of mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH) working in algebraic geometry. His particular interests concern moduli spaces, enumerative ...

he formulated a set of conjectures relating Gromov–Witten theory and Donaldson–Thomas theory, for which the four authors were awarded the Compositio Prize in 2009. In late 2022, it was announced that Nekrasov was awarded the 2023 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Physical Society (APS). The prize was awarded for Nekrasov's “elegant application of powerful mathematical techniques to extract exact results for quantum field theories, as well as shedding light on integrable systems and non-commutative geometry.�

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nekrasov, Nikita Living people 1973 births Russian string theorists French physicists Jewish physicists Mathematical physicists Princeton University alumni Theoretical physicists Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology alumni Stony Brook University faculty