Nikita Nekrasov

Curriculum Vitae. (Last updated: 2023 Jul 13)

Biography:
Nikita Nekrasov is the founding faculty member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, and Professor at the Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University. Nekrasov got his PhD from Princeton University under the supervision of Prof. David Gross (Nobel Prize 2004). He was a permanent professor at IHES (France) before permanently joining Stony Brook in 2013. He was awarded Prix Jacques Herbrand by French Academy of Sciences and Hermann Weyl Prize in 2004, Compositio Prize in 2009, and Dannie Heineman Prize in Mathematical Physics by American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics in 2023.

Research Statement:
Nekrasov is a theoretical physicist exploring quantum field theory and string theory.

The unifying theme of Nekrasov’s research is the deep interplay between geometry and physics. Since the early 1990s, he has worked on supersymmetric gauge theories, conformal field theory, and quantum integrable systems. In 2002, he introduced the instanton partition functions now known as Nekrasov partition functions, and in 2004 formulated the BPS/CFT correspondence, which unifies many of their remarkable mathematical and physical properties and has important applications to the geometric Langlands program.

His current research also concerns the emergence and nature of spacetime geometry in string theory, geometric formulations of fluid dynamics, and applications of gauge theory to condensed-matter systems, including twisted multilayer graphene.