Dam Thanh Son who was born in Hanoi was a student of Math class of Natural Science Gifted High School under Hanoi National University. When he was 15, he won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad, Prague 1984 with the perfect score 42/42. Son completed his PhD in Moscow State University in Russia at 25 years of age.
Son joined the University of Chicago in 2012 and serves as University Professor in Physics.
The professor returned home to participate in the international conference ‘Windows on the Universe: 25th Anniversary of the Rencontres du Vietnam’ that was held in Quy Nhon City of the central province of Binh Dinh on August 6. The conference was organized by the Rencontres du Vietnam in the International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education (ICISE), located in Quy Hoa Valley of the city.
“Dam Thanh Son was the first to understand that gauge/gravity duality could be used to address basic questions in strongly interacting many-body problems from cold trapped atoms to the quark-gluon plasma. He was able to show that one could compute transport coefficients, such as viscosity and conductivity, analytically in these systems, and that strong coupling typically gives rise to a bound on these coefficients.” said the ICTP.
Launched in 1985, ICTP's Dirac Medal aims to honor of P.A.M. Dirac, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and a staunch friend of the Centre. It is awarded annually on Dirac's birthday, August 8, to scientists who have made significant contributions to theoretical physics.
This year’s prizes were presented to physicists, including Subir Sachdev of Harvard University, Dam Thanh Son of the University of Chicago, and Xiao-Gang Wen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
