Luciano Maiani | |
|---|---|
 Maiani in 1996 | |
| Born | (1941-06-16)June 16, 1941 (age 84) |
| Alma mater | Sapienza University of Rome |
| Known for | GIM mechanism Charm quark |
| Awards | Matteucci Medal (1979) Sakurai Prize (1987) Dirac Medal (ICTP) (2007) Bruno Pontecorvo Prize (2013) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Particle physics |
| Institutions | Sapienza University of Rome CERN INFN |
Luciano Maiani (born 16 July 1941[1]) is aSammarinese physicist. He is best known for his prediction of thecharm quark withSheldon Glashow andJohn Iliopoulos (the "GIM mechanism").[2]
In 1964 Luciano Maiani received his degree in physics and he became a research associate at theIstituto Superiore di Sanità in Italy.[3] During that same year he collaborated withRaoul Gatto'stheoretical physics group at theUniversity of Florence.[3] He crossed the Atlantic in 1969 to do a post-doctoral fellowship atHarvard University's Lyman Laboratory of Physics.[3] In 1976 Maiani became a professor of theoretical physics at theUniversity of Rome,[3] however he traveled widely during this period, holding visiting professorships at theÉcole normale supérieure of Paris (1977)[3] andCERN (1979–1980 and 1985–1986).[3] Maiani also took an interest in the direction of particle physics research start on CERN's Scientific Policy Committee from 1984 to 1991.[3] Then, in 1993, until 1998, he became president of Italy'sIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN).[3] From 1993 to 1996 Maiani served as a scientific delegate in CERN council and then as thatcouncil's president in 1997.[3] Thereafter he became director general of CERN, serving from 1 January 1999[4] through the end of 2003.[5] From 1995 to 1997 Maiani chaired the Italian Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, Fondo Ricerca Applicata. At the end of 2007 he was proposed as president ofConsiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, but his nomination was suspended temporally after he signed a letter criticizing the rector of 'La Sapienza' University in Rome, who invitedPope Benedict XVI to give alectio magistralis in 2008.[6] However he became the President of CNR since 2008.
As of September 2020, he is a member of the ItalianAspen Institute.[7]
Luciano Maiani has authored over 100 scientific publications on the theory of elementary particles often with several co-authors. In 1970 he predicted thecharm quark in a paper with Glashow and Iliopoulos which was later discovered atSLAC andBrookhaven in 1974 and led to aNobel Prize in Physics for the discoverers. Working withGuido Altarelli in 1974 they explained that the observed octet enhancement in weak non-leptonic decays was due to a leading gluon exchange effect inquantum chromodynamics. They later extended this effect to describe theweak non-leptonic decays of charm andbottom quarks as well and also produced a parton model description of heavy flavor weak decays. In 1976 Maiani analyzed the CP violation in the six-quark theory and predicted the very small electric dipole moment of the neutron. In the 1980s he started using the numerical simulation of lattice QCD and this led to the first prediction of the decay constant of pseudoscalar charmed mesons and ofB mesons.
A proponent ofsupersymmetry, Maiani once said that the search for it was "primary goal of modern particle physics".[8]He has not confined his interest to the theoretical side of physics either, with involvement inALPI,EUROBALL,DAFNE,VIRGO and theLHC.
| Preceded by | CERN Director General 1999 – 2003 | Succeeded by |
