Even if  one has been in the field of physics for 50 years, monumental discoveries and contributions are still far from guaranteed.  However, this is cannot be any further from the truth regarding theoretical physicist Dr. Mikhail Shifman.

Shifman is especially well known for his groundbreaking and pioneering work in quantum chromodynamics and other contributions in high energy physics such as nonperturbative supersymmetry, supersymmetric gauge theories, and more.  Shifman is particularly known for the discovery of the penguin mechanism, gluon condensate, the SVZ sum rules, the invisible axion, exact results in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, the heavy quark theory based on the operator product expansion, non-Abelian vortex string, and the list goes on.  

Due to his immense contributions, Shifman has received numerous awards including the Humboldt Prize, Sakurai Prize, Lilienfeld Prize, Pomeranchuk Prize, the Dirac Medal and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.  Aside from his contributions and numerous awards, Mikhail Shifman is the author of numerous books such as “ITEP Lectures on Particle Physics and Field Theory” and “Advanced Topics in Quantum Field Theory”.  

Mikhail Shifman is currently the Ida Cohen Fine Professor of Theoretical Physics at the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Minnesota

About Mikhail Shifman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mikhail “Misha” Arkadyevich Shifman (Russian: Михаи́л Арка́дьевич Ши́фман; born 4 April 1949) is a theoretical physicist (high energy physics), formerly at Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, currently Ida Cohen Fine Professor of Theoretical Physics, William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota.

Scientific contributions

Shifman is known for a number of basic contributions to quantum chromodynamics, the theory of strong interactions, and to understanding of supersymmetric gauge dynamics. The most important results due to M. Shifman are diverse and include  the discovery of the penguin mechanism in the flavor-changing weak decays (1974); introduction of the gluon condensate and development of the SVZ sum rules relating properties of the low-lying hadronic states to the vacuum condensates (1979);  introduction of the invisible axion (1980)  first exact results in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories (NSVZ beta function, gluino condensate,1983–1988); (v) heavy quark theory based on the operator product expansion (1985–1995) critical domain walls (D-brane analogs) in super-Yang-Mills (1996),  non-perturbative (exact) planar equivalence between super-Yang-Mills and orientifold non-supersymmetric theories (2003)^, non-Abelian flux tubes and confined monopoles (2004 till present). His paper with A. Vainshtein and Zakharov on the SVZ sum rules is among the all-time top cited papers in high-energy physics.

Honors and awards

Mikhail Shifman received the Alexander-von-Humboldt Award in 1993, the Sakurai Prize in 1999, the Ida Cohen Fine Chair in Theoretical Physics and the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize in 2006, he is the 2007 laureate of the Blaise Pascal Chair, 2013 Pomeranchuk Prize and he was awarded the 2016 Dirac Medal and Prize. In May 2018, M. Shifman was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Selected books

• M. Shifman, ed. (1992). Vacuum Structure and QCD Sum Rules. Amsterdam: North Holland.
• Shifman, M. (1999). ITEP Lectures on Particle Physics and Field Theory (2 volumes). Singapore: World Scientific.
• Mikhail A. Shifman (2001). “Foreword and Notes from the Editor”. In Mikhail A. Shifman (ed.). At The Frontier of Particle Physics: Handbook of QCD (On the occasion of the 75th birthday of Professor Boris Ioffe, in 3 volumes). Singapore: World Scientific. 
• M. Shifman, ed. (2007). Felix Berezin, The Life and Death of the Mastermind of Supermathematics. Singapore: World Scientific. 
• Shifman, M.; Yung, A. (2009). Supersymmetric Solitons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Shifman, M. (2012). Advanced Topics in Quantum Field Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• M. Shifman, ed. (2015). Physics in a Mad World. Singapore: World Scientific. 
• Shifman, M. (2017). Standing together in Troubled Times. Singapore: World Scientific. 
• A. Gottvald, M. Shifman (2018). George Placzek – A Nuclear Physicist’s Odyssey. Singapore: World Scientific. 
• M. Shifman (2019). Quantum Field Theory II. Singapore: World Scientific. 
• M. Shifman (2019). Love and Physics – the Peierlses. Singapore: World Scientific.