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Scientific Report 2007-2009
Introduction
In memory of Nicola Cabibbo
On the 16th of August, Nicola Cabibbo, Professor of Theoretical Physics in our Department
and one of the world leading particle physicists, passed away.
At the beginning of his career, Cabibbo wrote with Raoul Gatto an exploratory paper on the
physics that could be studied with e + e − interactions 1 , which soon became a standard reference in
the field.
In 1963, while at CERN, Cabibbo discovered
a new fundamental constant of nature,
named after him the Cabibbo angle 2 . In his
theory, nuclear beta decay and strange particle
decays are included in a unified picture.
Building on previous ideas by Fermi, Feynman
and Gell-Mann and others, the Universality
concept thus formulated by Cabibbo
opened the way to the Electroweak Unification,
one of the highest achievements of modern
Physics. The success of his theory 3 and
his exceptional talent as teacher and conference
speaker made soon Cabibbo an internationally
known and influential figure.
Professor in Roma since 1966, he has promoted
a school of theoretical physicists which
had a world recognized impact on the field
of fundamental particles and interactions.
Among the most important results: the parton
description of e + e − annihilations into
hadrons 4 , the computation of electroweak corrections
to the muon magnetic moment 5 , the
study of the beta decay of heavy quarks 6 , the
prediction of the existence of a phase transition
from hadronic to deconfined quark-gluon
matter 7 , the first lattice computation of weak
parameters 8 , the study of upper and lower
bounds to the Higgs boson mass in Grand Unified Theories 9 . Together with Giorgio Parisi,
Cabibbo proposed and devised a parallel supercomputer dedicated to lattice QCD studies 10 .
Nicola Cabibbo has been President of INFN (1983-1992), of ENEA (1993-1998) and of Accademia
Pontificia delle Scienze (since 1993). He was member of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
and of the American Academy of Sciences. He received the High Energy and Particle Physics
Prize of the European Physical Society (1991), the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society
(1989) and the ICTP Dirac Medal (2010).
Luciano Maiani
President of CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Sapienza Università di Roma 7 Dipartimento di Fisica