Sergio Fubini 1928-2005
Sergio Fubini passed away on 8 January, aged 76, after a prolonged illness.
Fubini was an outstanding theorist, whose deep insight led to many applications of theoretical models to more phenomenological issues. In the early 1960s, he and his co-workers gave a field-theoretical dynamical basis to S-matrix concepts such as Regge singularities. Then in the mid-1960s his group provided an algebraic formulation of current-algebra and superconvergence sum rules that played an important role in the birth of dual resonance models. Subsequently, at MIT, Sergio and collaborators factorized the dual S-matrix, converting it into an infinite component field theory, opening the way to what soon became string theory.
Wherever Sergio worked, his skill and enthusiasm left a strong mark on students and institutions, such as the universities of Padua and Turin in Italy, MIT and CERN. He was an active member of the CERN Directorate under John Adams and Léon Van Hove where he played an important role in the planning stage of the Large Electron Positron collider. In later years he devoted much effort to promoting a scientific "peace-bridge" in the Middle East that led to the creation of the SESAME synchrotron-radiation laboratory in Jordan. His rich personality will remain vivid in the memory of the many friends and collaborators who had the great opportunity of knowing him and of interacting with him. He will be greatly missed.
Daniele Amati and Gabriele Veneziano, CERN.