Richard Samuel Ward FRS (born 6 September 1951) is a British

mathematical physicist Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developmen ...

. He is a Professor of Mathematical & Theoretical Particle Physics at the

University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...

Work

Ward earned his Ph.D. from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 1977, under the supervision of

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...

. He is most famous for his extension of Penrose's

twistor theory In theoretical physics, twistor theory was proposed by Roger Penrose in 1967 as a possible path to quantum gravity and has evolved into a branch of theoretical and mathematical physics. Penrose proposed that twistor space should be the basic arena ...

to nonlinear cases, which he with

Michael Atiyah Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded the ...

used to describe

instanton An instanton (or pseudoparticle) is a notion appearing in theoretical and mathematical physics. An instanton is a classical solution to equations of motion with a finite, non-zero action, either in quantum mechanics or in quantum field theory. Mo ...

s by vector bundles on the three-dimensional complex

projective space In mathematics, the concept of a projective space originated from the visual effect of perspective, where parallel lines seem to meet ''at infinity''. A projective space may thus be viewed as the extension of a Euclidean space, or, more generally ...

. He has related interests in the theory of monopoles,

topological In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing h ...

solitons In mathematics and physics, a soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medium ...

and

skyrmions In particle theory, the skyrmion () is a topologically stable field configuration of a certain class of non-linear sigma models. It was originally proposed as a model of the nucleon by (and named after) Tony Skyrme in 1961. As a topological solito ...

Honors and awards

Ward was awarded the

Whitehead Prize The Whitehead Prize is awarded yearly by the London Mathematical Society to multiple mathematicians working in the United Kingdom who are at an early stage of their career. The prize is named in memory of homotopy theory pioneer J. H. C. Whiteh ...

in 1989 for his work in mathematical physics. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2005.Notices of the AMS - Sept 2005

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

His certificate of election reads:

Bibliography

Books

''Twistor geometry and field theory''
(with Raymond O. Wells Jr), Cambridge University Press 1990
''Integrable systems: twistors, loop groups, and Riemann surfaces''
(with

Nigel Hitchin Nigel James Hitchin FRS (born 2 August 1946) is a British mathematician working in the fields of differential geometry, gauge theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics. He is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University o ...

Graeme Segal Graeme Bryce Segal FRS (born 21 December 1941) is an Australian mathematician, and professor at the University of Oxford. Biography Segal was educated at the University of Sydney, where he received his BSc degree in 1961. He went on to receiv ...

), Oxford, Clarendon Press 1999

Selected academic works

*. *. *.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Richard S. Academics of Durham University Fellows of the Royal Society Living people 1951 births