Vadim Knizhnik

Vadim Genrichowitsch Knischnik (Russian Вадим Генрихович Книжник, English transliteration Vadim Knizhnik Genrikhovich; born February 20, 1962 in Kiev, † December 25, 1987 in Moscow) was a Russian theoretical physicist.

Knischnik won as a student twice the Physics Olympiad of the USSR, from 1978 to 1984 studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and has been on the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics at Alexander Polyakov ( Polyakov ) PhD (Russian doctoral degree ). In 1986, he joined the Landau Institute, but was also at ITEP. His first publication, he placed as a student together with his professor Alexander Fyodorovich Andreyev. At the Landau Institute, he worked primarily with quantum field theory and string theory and quantum gravity, especially. His career as a promising mathematical physicist in the field of string theory was canceled by the early death at only 25 years.

Knischnik examined loop diagrams of the perturbation series in string theory, using methods of modern algebraic geometry used. According to him and Alexander Zamolodchikov the KZ equations are called complex partial differential equations of first order, which obey the correlation functions of conformal field theories on affine Lie algebras.