Gabriele Veneziano

Gabriele Veneziano ( ; ; born 7 September 1942 ) is an Italian theoretical physicist widely considered the father of string theory. He has conducted most of his scientific activities at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and held the Chair of Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology at the Collège de France in Paris from 2004 to 2013, until the age of retirement there. Veneziano discovered that the Euler Beta function, interpreted as a scattering amplitude, has many of the features needed to explain the physical properties of strongly interacting particles. This amplitude, known as the Veneziano amplitude, is interpreted as the scattering amplitude for four open string tachyons. In retrospect, this work is now considered the founding of string theory although at the time it was not apparent the string picture would lead to a new theory of quantum gravity.

Veneziano's work led to intense research to try to explain the strong force by a field theory of strings about one fermi in length. The rise of quantum chromodynamics, a rival explanation of the strong force, led to a temporary loss of interest in string theories until the 1980s, when interest was revived.

In 1991 he published a paper that shows how an inflationary cosmological model can be obtained from string theory, thus opening the door to a description of string cosmological pre-big bang scenarios.

Society memberships National Academy of Sciences of Turin (1994) Lincei National Academy (1996) French Academy of Sciences (2002)

Awards Pomeranchuk Prize, 1999 Gold medal della Repubblica Italiana come Benemerito della Cultura, 2000 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, from the American Physical Society, 2004 Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society, 2005 Albert Einstein Medal, Albert Einstein Institute, Bern, Switzerland, 2006 Oskar Klein Medal, 2007 Commendatore al merito della Repubblica Italiana, 2007 James Joyce Award, University College Dublin, 2009 Felice Pietro Chisesi and Caterina Tomassoni Prize, 2009 Dirac Medal by ICTP, 2014 Honorary doctorate, Swansea University, 2015 Friedel-Volterra Prize, by SIF and SFP, 2016–2017