The William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute is a research institute in the

University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering The College of Science and Engineering (CSE) is one of the colleges of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On July 1, 2010, the college was officially renamed from the Institute of Technology (IT). It was created in 1935 by bri ...

. FTPI was largely the work of physics Professor Emeritus, Stephen Gasiorowicz and university alumnus and

Twin Cities Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in sta ...

real-estate developer William I. Fine. The institute officially came into existence in January 1987. FTPI faculty consists of six permanent members: Andrey V. Chubukov, Alex Kamenev, Keith Olive, Maxim Pospelov,

Mikhail Shifman Mikhail "Misha" Arkadyevich Shifman (russian: Михаи́л Арка́дьевич Ши́фман; born 4 April 1949) is a theoretical physicist (high energy physics), formerly at Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Ida ...

, and Boris Shklovskii. The William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute has on Oversight Committee consisting of ten members. The Oversight Committee is the board of directors that make decisions concerning the staffing and budgeting of the institute.

Outreach

The Misel Family Lecture Series The Irving and Edythe Misel Family Lecture Series, hosted by FTPI, invites physicists from around the world to the University of Minnesota to discuss physics with the general public. It is funded by a private donation gift from the Edythe and Irving Misel family. The list of the Misel Lecturers to date is: 2006:

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direc ...

(2004 Nobel Prize in Physics), 2007:

Leo Kadanoff Leo Philip Kadanoff (January 14, 1937 – October 26, 2015) was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics (emeritus from 2004) at the University of Chicago and a former President of the American Physical Society (APS). He contributed t ...

(1980 Wolf Prize), 2008:

Jim Peebles Phillip James Edwin Peebles (born April 25, 1935) is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is widely regard ...

(2019 The Nobel Prize in Physics and 1982 Heineman Prize), 2009:

Helen Quinn Helen Rhoda Arnold Quinn (born 19 May 1943) is an Australian-born particle physicist and educator who has made major contributions to both fields. Her contributions to theoretical physics include the Peccei–Quinn theory which implies a corres ...

(2000 Dirac Medal), 2010:

N. David Mermin Nathaniel David Mermin (; born 30 March 1935) is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Mermin–Wagner theorem, his application of the term " boojum" to superfluidity, his textbook with Neil Ashcroft on sol ...

(2010 Majorana Prize), 2011:

Roger Blandford Roger David Blandford, FRS, FRAS (born 1949) is a British theoretical astrophysicist, best known for his work on black holes. Early life Blandford was born in Grantham, England and grew up in Birmingham. Career Blandford is famous in the as ...

(1998 Heineman Prize), 2012: John Ellis (2005 Dirac Medal), 2013:

Eric Cornell Eric Allin Cornell (born December 19, 1961) is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel ...

(2001 Nobel Prize in Physics), 2014:

Andrei Linde Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde (russian: Андре́й Дми́триевич Ли́нде; born March 2, 1948) is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Linde is one of the ...

(2012 Fundamental Physics Prize), 2015:

Joseph Polchinski Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr. (; May 16, 1954 – February 2, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Biography Polchinski was born in White Plains, New York, the elder of two children to Joseph Gerard Polchinski Sr. (1929 ...

(2008

Dirac Medal The Dirac Medal is the name of four awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations, named in honour of Professor Paul Dirac, one of the great theoretical physicists of the 20 ...

and 2017

Fundamental Physics Prize The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is one of the Breakthrough Prizes, awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Board. Initially named Fundamental Physics Prize, it was founded in July 2012 by Russia-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture capit ...

), 2016:

John Preskill John Phillip Preskill (born January 19, 1953) is an American theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech ...

(member of the National Academy of Sciences), 2017: Wendy Freedman (2016

Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics The Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics is jointly awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics for outstanding work in astrophysics. It is funded by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heine ...

), 2018:

Nergis Mavalvala Nergis Mavalvala (born 1968) is a Pakistani-American astrophysicist. She is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the Dean of the university's School of S ...

(2017 Carnegie Corporation of New York Great Immigrants award recipient and 2014 NOGLSTP LGBTQ Scientist of the Year), 2019: Charles Marcus (2018 National Academy of Sciences), and 2022: Carlos Frenk (2014

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded" and it can be awarded for any reason. Past awar ...

. Visitor Program FTPI has a worldwide reach. The institute has hosted over 800 individual researchers, from institutions in more than 18 different countries, for working visits of one day to six months. Workshops FTPI hosts up to three workshops per year for physicists from around the world. This includes the 2013 CAQCD meeting which was special because it was the tenth meeting in the series. The proceedings of the previous conferences – they are held biannually – reveal the developments of QCD and related theories from the early 1990s. As well as a workshop in October 2000 celebrating 30 years of supersymmetry.

Awards

Current and former faculty members of FTPI have been honored with a number of prizes and awards. Keith Olive is a current Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Physics and was awarded the 2018

Hans Bethe Prize The Hans A. Bethe Prize, is presented annually by the American Physical Society. The prize honors outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields ...

. Former faculty, Leonid Glazman was a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair. Boris Shklovskii is the recipient of the 1986 Landau Award and the 2019

Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize The Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize is an annual award given by the American Physical Society "to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics." It was endowed by AT&T Bell Lab ...

. Former faculty,

Arkady Vainshtein Arkady Vainshtein (russian: Аркáдий Иóсифович Вайнштéйн; born 24 February 1942) is a Russian and American Professor Emeritus of Theoretical physics who was awarded Pomeranchuk Prize (2005) and Sakurai Prize (1999) for theor ...

and

were awarded the 2016 Dirac Medal and Prize. Andrey V. Chubukov was awarded the 2018 John Bardeen Prize. Three faculty members have been awarded the

Sakurai Prize The J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, is presented by the American Physical Society at its annual April Meeting, and honors outstanding achievement in particle physics theory. The prize consists of a monetary award ($10,000 U ...

: former faculty,

(1999),

(1999), and

Mikhail Voloshin Mikhail "Misha" Voloshin (May 14, 1953, Bucharest, Romania – March 20, 2020) was a Russian and American theoretical physicist. Voloshin graduated from physics class of Moscow School 57 in 1970. Voloshin started working at ITEP in 1976 and accor ...

(2001). former faculty,

(2005) and

(2013) received the

Pomeranchuk Prize The Pomeranchuk Prize is an international award for theoretical physics, awarded annually since 1998 by the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) from Moscow. It is named after Russian physicist Isaak Yakovlevich Pomeranchuk, wh ...

was honored with the

Lilienfeld Prize The Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, to remember Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, has been awarded annually, since 1989. (It was not awarded in 2002). The purpose of the Prize is to recognize outstanding contributions to p ...

(2006), and elected as Laureate of Les Chaires Internacionales de Recherche Blaise Pascal (2007). Former member Anatoly Larkin was awarded the

Fritz London Memorial Prize The Fritz London Memorial Prize was created to recognize scientists who made outstanding contributions to the advances of the field of Low Temperature Physics. It is traditionally awarded in the first session of the International Conference on Lo ...

in Low Temperature Physics (1990), the Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize (1993), the

Lars Onsager Prize The Lars Onsager Prize is a prize in theoretical statistical physics awarded annually by the American Physical Society. Prize recipients receive a medal, certificate, and $10,000. It was established in 1993 by Drs. Russell and Marian Donnelly in m ...

in Theoretical Statistical Physics (2002) as well as the Bardeen Prize for Superconductivity (2004).

Funding

The William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute is financed from a combination of private and University funds. In the world of fundamental-science research institutes, FTPI is, for its part, something of an oddity. While most such organizations are large, National Science Foundation-funded enterprises, Minnesota's FTPI was created in large part out of the generosity of a single private donor, and it is dedicated to the research efforts of its members. The

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

ER40823 grant is mutually submitted between the Department of Physics at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

and FTPI. This grant is entitled "Experimental and Theoretical High Energy Physics" and helps to support faculty and postdoctoral salaries.DOE Grant Funding
/ref>

References

External links

William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute Homepage
{{authority control University of Minnesota Research institutes in Minnesota Physics institutes Theoretical physics institutes