CSE professor Mikhail Shifman elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Shifman known for his research in high-energy physics
MINNEAPOLIS (05/03/2018) — University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering Professor Mikhail "Misha" Shifman has been elected as a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his excellence in original scientific research.
Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer. Shifman is one of only 84 researchers nationwide to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year. They will be inducted into the Academy next spring during the National Academy of Sciences 156th Annual Meeting.
Shifman is the Ida Cohen Fine Professor of Theoretical Physics in the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering’s William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute. Shifman has been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota since 1990. He previously worked at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow, Russia.
Shifman is known for a number of basic contributions to quantum chromodynamics, the theory of strong interactions, and understanding of supersymmetric gauge dynamics. He is the author of more than eight books and more than 300 research papers. A paper he co-wrote on the Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov (SVZ) sum rules is among the all-time top cited papers in high-energy physics.
Shifman has received many honors for his work including the Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1993, the Sakurai Prize in 1999, and the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize in 2006. He was named the laureate of the Blaise Pascal Chair in 2007, received the Pomeranchuk Prize in 2013, and was awarded the Dirac Medal and Prize in 2016. Shifman is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Shifman received his Diploma with Honors (master’s degree equivalent) from the Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology and a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics from the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow. Shifman was born in 1949 in Riga, Latvia, the son of a civil engineer.
University of Minnesota Forest Resources Regents Professor Peter B. Reich was also elected to the NAS this year. Reich is the F.B. Hubachek Professor of Forest Ecology in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resources Sciences. He has an exemplary reputation internationally for his work in plant physiology, ecosystem ecology and global biology. His current research focuses on the impacts of global environmental change on terrestrial ecosystems, primarily forests and grasslands, and how that alters the global carbon cycle. Reich has published approximately 600 scientific papers, many of which have appeared in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He was named as a BBVA Prize Laureate in 2010, receiving their Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology and in 2011 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The National Academy of Sciences is an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Among the Academy’s renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. About 200 Academy members have won Nobel Prizes.
For a full listing of this year's elected members, visit the National Academy of Sciences website.