Kevin Costello | |
|---|---|
 Costello in 2018 | |
| Born | Kevin Joseph Costello Cork, Ireland |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (PhD) |
| Known for | Renormalization Topological quantum field theory |
| Awards | Berwick Prize (2017)[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Northwestern University Perimeter Institute |
| Thesis | Gromov–Witten invariants and symmetric products (2003) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ian Grojnowski[2] |
| Website | www |
Kevin Joseph CostelloFRS is an Irish mathematician, since 2014 theKrembil Foundation'sWilliam Rowan Hamilton chair of theoretical physics at thePerimeter Institute inWaterloo, Ontario, Canada.[1][3]
Costello was educated at theUniversity of Cambridge where he was awarded aPhD in 2003[4] for research onGromov–Witten invariants supervised byIan Grojnowski.[2]
Costello works in the field ofmathematical physics, particularly in the mathematical foundations ofperturbativequantum field theory and the applications oftopological andconformal field theories to other areas of mathematics. In the bookRenormalization and Effective Field Theory[5] he introduced a rigorous mathematical formalism for therenormalization group flow formalism ofKenneth Wilson and proved the renormalizability ofYang–Mills theory in this framework.
More recent work on formalism for quantum field theory uses the idea of afactorization algebra to describe the local structure ofquantum observables, such as theoperator product expansion for conformal field theories. Using this language, Costello gave a rigorous construction of theWitten genus inelliptic cohomology, using a variant ofChern–Simons theory.[6]Along withDavide Gaiotto, Kevin Costello was one of two researchers appointed to named chairs by the Perimeter Institute in 2014, funded by a $4 million investment by the Krembil Foundation. Costello's appointment was praised byFields medalistsMaxim Kontsevich andEdward Witten.[3][7]
Costello was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.[8] He was awarded theBerwick Prize[9][10] by theLondon Mathematical Society in 2017.[1] In 2020 he was admitted as an honorary member of theRoyal Irish Academy.[11]
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