Alexander Markovich Polyakov - Biography

Alexander Markovich Polyakov (Алекса́ндр Ма́ркович Поляко́в; born 27 September 1945) is a theoretical physicist, formerly at the Landau Institute in Moscow, at Princeton University.

Important discoveries

He is known for a number of basic contributions to quantum field theory, including work on what is now called the 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole in non-abelian gauge theory, independent from Gerard 't Hooft. His paper Infinite conformal symmetry in two-dimensional quantum field theory, with Alexander Belavin, and Alexander Zamolodchikov, from 1984, has classic status. His path integral formulation of string theory had profound and lasting impacts in the conceptual and mathematical understanding of the theory. He also played an important role in elucidating the conceptual framework behind renormalization independent of Kenneth G. Wilson's Nobel prize winning work. He formulated pioneering ideas in gauge/string duality long before the breakthrough of AdS/CFT using D-branes. Other insightful conjectures that came years or even decades before active work by others include integrability of gauge and string theories and certain ideas about turbulence.

Honors and awards

Alexander Polyakov was awarded the Lars Onsager prize (together with A. Belavin and A. Zamolodchikov) in 2011, Harvey Prize in 2010, Dirac Medal and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1986, the Lorentz Medal in 1994, and the Oskar Klein Medal in 1996.

He has been elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1984 and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2005.

See also

• Polyakov action
• 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole
• Belavin-Polyakov-Schwarz-Tyupkin instantons
• QCD vacuum
• Migdal-Polyakov conformal bootstrap
• Polyakov's Liouville theory
• Polyakov strings
• AdS/CFT correspondence

External links

• Dirac Medal 1986 citation
• Departmental homepage at Princeton