Nima Arkani-Hamed

Nima Arkani-Hamed
Nima Arkani-Hamed
Born	April 5, 1972 (age 52); Houston, Texas, U.S.
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Harvard University; Institute for Advanced Study; Cornell University
Alma mater	University of Toronto; University of California, Berkeley
Known for	Large extra dimensions; Dimensional deconstruction; Little Higgs; Split supersymmetry; Dark Matter; Scattering amplitudes
Notable awards	Gribov Medal of the European Physical Society (2003); Sackler Prize of Tel Aviv University (2008); Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award (2005); Fundamental Physics Prize (2012)
	Website; Official website

Nima Arkani-Hamed (born April 5, 1972) is an Iranian-American-Canadian^[1] theoretical physicist with interests in high-energy physics, string theory and cosmology. Arkani-Hamed is now on the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.^[2] He was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Early life

Arkani-Hamed's parents, Jafargholi "Jafar" Arkani-Hamed and Hamideh Alasti are both physicists from Iran.^[3] His father, a native of Tabriz,^[3] was chairman of the physics department at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, and later taught earth and planetary sciences at McGill University in Montreal.^[4] Arkani-Hamed moved to Iran as a child with his family and they eventually immigrated to Canada.^[5]

Academic career

Arkani-Hamed graduated at the University of Toronto with a joint honours degree in mathematics and physics in 1993, and went to the University of California, Berkeley, for his graduate studies, where he worked under the supervision of Lawrence Hall. The majority of his graduate work was on studies of supersymmetry and flavor physics. His Ph.D dissertation was titled "Supersymmetry and Hierarchies". He completed his Ph.D in 1997 and went to SLAC at Stanford University for post-doctoral studies. During this time he worked with Savas Dimopoulos and developed the paradigm of large extra dimensions.^{[citation needed]}

In 1999 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley physics department. He took a leave of absence from Berkeley to visit Harvard University beginning January 2001. Shortly after arriving at Harvard he worked with Howard Georgi and Andrew Cohen on the idea of emergent extra dimensions, dubbed dimensional deconstruction. These ideas eventually led to the development of little Higgs theories.^{[citation needed]}

He officially joined Harvard's faculty in the fall of 2002. Arkani-Hamed has appeared on various television programs and newspapers talking about space, time and dimensions and the current state of theoretical physics. In 2003 he won the Gribov Medal of the European Physical Society, and in the summer of 2005 while at Harvard he won the Phi Beta Kappa award for teaching excellence. He appeared in the 2013 documentary film Particle Fever. He participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007. In 2008, he won the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize given at Tel Aviv University to young scientists who have made outstanding and fundamental contributions in Physical Science.^{[citation needed]}

Arkani-Hamed was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.^[6] In 2010, he gave the Messenger lectures at Cornell University.

Nima Arkani-Hamed was a professor at Harvard University from 2002–2008, and is now at the Institute for Advanced Study.^[7] Arkani-Hamed was selected for being a member of The Selection Committee for the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.^[8]

Honors and awards

In July 2012, he was an inaugural awardee of the Fundamental Physics Prize, the creation of physicist and internet entrepreneur, Yuri Milner.^[9] He has previously won the Sackler Prize from Tel Aviv University in 2008, the Gribov Medal from the European Physical Society in 2003, and the INFN-Pisa Gamberini prize in 1997. He was awarded the Packard and Sloan Fellowship in 2000.^[1]