In Memoriam...

Professor David Olive, a recipient of ICTP's Dirac Medal in 1997, passed away on 7 November 2012.

Professor Olive shared the Dirac Medal with Peter Goddard, Institute for Advanced Study, USA, for "highly influential contributions to theoretical physics, over an extended period," according to the award citation. It went on to say: "Goddard and Olive have contributed many crucial insights that shaped our emerging understanding of string theory and have also had a far-reaching impact on our understanding of four-dimensional field theory."

Professor Olive's work on spacetime supersymmetry of the spinning string theory (with F. Gliozzi and J. Scherk) made possible the whole idea of superstrings, which we now understand as the most natural framework for supersymmetry and string theory.

Goddard and Olive introduced key ideas about the use of current algebra in string theory which were very important in the subsequent discovery of attractive ways to incorporate space-time gauge symmetry in string theory, thus making it possible for string theory to incorporate the standard model of particle physics. These discoveries, made in the years 1973-83, were among the most crucial steps in making possible the 'superstring revolution' of 1984-5.