Memorial Volume for Ludwig Faddeev

Book excerpt: Ludwig Faddeev is widely recognized as one of the titans of 20th century mathematical physics. His fundamental contributions to scattering theory, quantum gauge theories, and the theory of classical and quantum completely integrable systems played a key role in shaping modern mathematical physics. Ludwig Faddeev's major achievements include the solution of the three-body problem in quantum mechanics, the mathematical formulation of quantum gauge theories and corresponding Feynman rules, Hamiltonian and algebraic methods in mathematical physics, with applications to gauge theories with anomalies, quantum systems with constraints and solitons, the discovery of the algebraic structure of classical and quantum integrable systems and quantum groups, and solitons with the topology of knots. Faddeev's name is imprinted in many areas of mathematics and theoretical physics, including "Faddeev's equations" and "Faddeev's Green function" in scattering theory, "Faddeev-Popov ghosts" and "Faddeev-Popov determinant" in gauge theories, "Gardner-Faddeev-Zakharov bracket" for the KdV equation, "Faddeev-Zamolodchikov algebra" in quantum integrable systems, "Faddeev-Reshetikhin-Takhtajan construction" in the theory of quantum groups, knotted solitons in the "Skyrme-Faddeev model" and many others. Ludwig Faddeev founded the St. Petersburg school of modern mathematical physics and distinguished himself by serving the mathematics community for over three decades including his leadership of the International Mathematical Union in the period of 1986-1990. He was conferred numerous prizes and memberships of prestigious institutions in recognition of the importance of his work. These include the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, the Dirac Medal, the Max Planck Medal, the Shaw Prize and the Lomonosov Gold Medal among others. A gathering of contributions from some of the biggest names in mathematics and physics, this volume serves as a tribute to this legendary figure. Volume contributors include: Fields medalist Sir Michael Atiyah, Jürg Fröhlich, Roman Jackiw, Vladimir Korepin, Nikita Nekrasov, André Neveu, Alexander M Polyakov, Samson Shatashvili, Fedor Smirnov as well as Nobel laureates Frank Wilczek and C N Yang.