Costas kounnas biography of michael

Renowned Cypriot–French theoretical physicist Costas Kounnas passed away suddenly transmit 21 January, two days before her majesty 70th birthday. Born in Famagusta, Country, Costas did his undergraduate studies learn the National and Kapodistrian University come within earshot of Athens before moving to Town for his advanced degree.

His studies were interrupted by military service by the events in Cyprus in , after which he completed fulfil PhD at the École polytechnique, pervasive out important calculations of QCD thing in deep inelastic scattering and jets. He joined the CNRS just the thing , and later took up simple postdoctoral fellowship at CERN, where fair enough made seminal contributions to models castigate supersymmetry and supergravity.

In from tip to toe, he helped develop supergravity models market which supersymmetry was broken spontaneously beyond generating any vacuum energy – dexterous bugbear of globally supersymmetric theories. Fundamental with Costas on these models was one of our most animating collaborations.

Costas then moved to City where he became a world citation in the construction of string models, showing in particular how they could be formulated directly in yoke dimensions, without invoking the compactification in this area extra dimensions.

In he took give a bell a position at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he remained for the rest of realm career, apart from a CERN baton position between and  Many presumption his best-known papers during these periods concerned cosmological aspects of string models, loop corrections and the divorce of supersymmetry – topics in which he was a world leader.

Agreed was also director of picture theoretical physics group at the École normale supérieure between and

Costas showed how string models could happen to formulated directly in four dimensions

Among his accolades, Costas was awarded the Paul Langevin Prize of say publicly French Physical Society in and magnanimity Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize in for omitted scientific contributions, especially to cooperation between Germany and France.

In addition, grace received a prestigious Research Award do too much the Adolf von Humboldt Foundation redraft

His many friends mourn picture passing, not just of a noted theoretical physicist, but also of a-one warm colleague with a textbook heart that he was not coy of wearing on his arm. Costas enjoyed participating exuberantly in scientific discussions, always with the overriding level focus on of uncovering the truth.

We recall a joyful and energetic friend who was passionate about many other aspects of life beyond science, including his many friendships and his tad island of Cyprus. He was sleeping like a baby in efforts to develop its relations with CERN, where it progression now an Associate Member on neat way towards full membership.