Luciano Maiani
CERN's new Director General Luciano Maiani receives the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of St Petersburg State University, Russia, from Rector Ludmila Verbitskaya in recognition of his distinguished contributions to theoretical physics, including the prediction of the existence of charmed particles and his work on the theory of weak interactions. The award was part of the centenary celebrations of the birth of Vladimir Fock during a special commemorative session on 21 December 1998. Prof. Fock created St Petersburg's Department of Theoretical Physics and was associated with the university for more than half a century, during which time he pioneered important new methods in theoretical physics such as Fock space and the Hartree-Fock method.