Professor Werner Nahm FRS

Senior Professor, School of Theoretical Physics, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Werner Nahm is a very distinguished mathematical physicist of the highest originality whose work has been motivated by physical theory and has led to important developments in mathematics. He was the first to classify the spectra of string theories by examining the modular properties of their partition functions, he pioneered the classification and representation theory of graded Lie algebras, he extended the ADHM construction of instantons to BPS monopoles by developing a remarkable transformation between one and three dimensional field theories by introducing the beautiful 'Nahm equations', which have deep mathematical significance. His work on dilogarithms, W-algebras and modular invariant partition functions in conformal field theory has been widely influential.