Lev Lipatov celebrates his 70th birthday
Lev Lipatov, whose name enters the abbreviations DGLAP and BFKL, which are familiar to every high-energy physicist, turned 70 in May.
Lev graduated from the University of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in 1962 and soon joined the group of Vladimir Gribov at Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, one of the best in the former Soviet Union. Apart from numerous visiting positions abroad, Lev was a staff member at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI). (For the first few years, before the institutes separated, the PNPI was part of the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute in Leningrad.) In 1980 he became head of the Quantum Field Theory Department and he was elected head of the Theory Division at PNPI as well as Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1997.
Apart from his pioneering and influential work on the theory of high-energy scattering in QCD (QCD scattering: from DGLAP to BFKL), Lev is famous for his finding of the deep relation between the behaviour of perturbation series in quantum field theory, with classical solutions.
Lev's research earned him the Alexander von Humboldt prize in 1995 and the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship in 2006. In 2001 he received the International Pomeranchuk prize, simultaneously with Tullio Regge.
SPIRES database lists more than 200 papers by Lev (as of April 2010), with more than 16,000 citations. Among them are 10 papers listed as "renowned", having more than 500 citations each; three of these have around 2000 citations. A recently published Festschrift, entitled Subtleties in Quantum Field Theory, is a collection of papers by Lev's friends, colleagues and collaborators, which pays tribute to his pioneering contributions to various topics in modern theoretical physics.
The word "subtlety" probably best characterizes Lev's work. He typically becomes interested in certain fine details of a theory (some would call them "technical") and he then elaborates on them. He builds a new formalism based on subtleties and ultimately it becomes overwhelming and commands our understanding, rather like a beautiful game of chess (and Lev is a fine chess-player). Methods are of primary importance – the results will follow.
Visits
Clotilde Fonseca, minister of science and technology of Costa Rica, centre left, visited CERN on 18 May. She was welcomed by Feliticas Pauss, CERN co-ordinator for external relations, left, and Peter Jenni, former spokesperson for the ATLAS experiment, right. She toured the ATLAS visitor centre and had an introduction to CERN's activities by José Salicio Diez, centre, CERN's adviser for Latin America, before attending a UNOSAT meeting.
Gennadiy Mesyats, right, vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and director of the Lebedev Physical Institute (LPI) and Vladimir Ritus, seated left, chief research officer at LPI and co-ordinator of the RAS Presidium Programme "CERN Accelerator Complex-related Experimental and Theoretical Research into Fundamental Interactions" came to CERN on 26–30 April. They visited experiments in which Russian institutes are involved and toured many of CERN's facilities, including the silicon facility with Vladimir Eremin, standing left, of the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, and Michael Moll of CERN. They also met Russian physicists working at CERN and had discussions with the director-general, Rolf Heuer, and Tadeusz Kurtyka, adviser for non-member states.
The deputy minister for science, technology, and innovation in Malaysia, Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof, centre, came to CERN on 20 May. Accompanied by CERN's adviser for non-member states, John Ellis, right, and CERN's adviser for Malaysia, Emmanuel Tsesmelis, he visited the LHC superconducting magnet test hall, where he saw a model of the ATLAS detector on display. His visit also included a tour of the ATLAS visitor centre.