Alexey Zamolodchikov

Some weeks ago, I learned that Alexey Zamolodchikov died. Many of you who are theoretical physicists will definitely know the name, as the name Zamolodchikov is all over the fields of statistical physics and integrable systems, conformal field theory, string theory, and Liouville theory, for example: It would be either him, his twin brother Alexander, or both of them that you’ll have certainly encountered on that paper that was crucial to your work in one or several ways. (Photo (2000) by Craig Tracy. I found it here.)

I did not know him personally, and so will not go on at length here, but given how much his contributions have filtered into so much of what I’ve been doing since I was a graduate student (I remember being, as a student far away from the centre of activity in the field, somewhat fascinated with those papers that listed both A.B. Zamolodchikov and Al.B. Zamolochikov, and wondering who they were, and what they were like), I felt that I should mark his passing here in the blog world, in the hope that many of you might want to know this news, and whether you knew him or not, perhaps to think a bit about him and his work for a while. He’s enriched the field greatly.

I got a hold* of his obituary that appeared in Le Monde on the 14th November, which is available as a pdf here for you to read. (I’d been waiting to get hold of it before doing this post.)

-cvj

(*Thanks Huber Saleur.)