Roberto Peccei

Roberto D. Peccei ( * 1942 ) is an Italian theoretical physicist who deals with elementary particle physics and astro - particle physics.

Peccei is the son of Aurelio Peccei, co-founder and first president of the Club of Rome and Manager at Fiat and Olivetti, co-founder of Alitalia. Peccei grew up in Argentina, where his father from 1949 led the Fiat - shops, and went from 1958 in the U.S., where he in 1962 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) earned his bachelor's degree in 1964 his master's degree at New York University was in 1969 and his doctorate at MIT. After that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington and from 1971 at Stanford University. From 1978 he was a member of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich and from 1984 Head of the Theory Group at DESY in Hamburg. From 1989 he was professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA ), where he was head of the physics faculty from 1993 Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences of the College of Letters and Sciences and Vice Chancellor since 2000 for Research. Currently, he also directs the advisory committee of the Laboratory of Nuclear Science, Cornell University and MIT.

Peccei was known for his proposal of solution to the Strong CP problem of strong interaction ( quantum chromodynamics, QCD) with Helen Quinn in the 1970s ( Peccei -Quinn theory ). A due to the complicated vacuum structure of QCD theoretically possible CP- violating term of the QCD ( by Gerardus ' t Hooft predicted ), is not observed in nature. In the 1970s, therefore, was a theoretical obstacle to the achievement of QCD as the theory of strong interactions. Peccei and Quinn proposed a solution to this problem of QCD ago by a global chiral U (1 ) symmetry ( Peccei -Quinn symmetry). From the theory follows the existence of axions (since the symmetry is spontaneously broken, the axions are the Goldstone bosons occurring ). They are one of the candidates for the dark matter. Peccei also deals with the connection of astrophysical and cosmological questions with elementary particle physics ( astro-particle physics ), for example with the hypothesis of baryogenesis over the previous generation of leptons ( leptogenesis ).

Peccei is like his father, a member of the Club of Rome and president of the Fondazione Aurelio Peccei. For 2013, the program of the Sakurai Prize was awarded.