Miguel Angel Virasoro and Steven Weinberg

Miguel Angel Virasoro and Steven Weinberg

It has been a sad weekend for physics with the passing of two key figures of our community.  Steven Weinberg, a giant of XX century physics, one of the architects of the Standard Model and of the modern view of Quantum Field Theory, universal teacher of our field through his many books,  and a revered intelectual well beyond the realm of physics, left us on July 23. 

On the same day, in his native Buenos Aires,  we also lost Miguel Angel Virasoro, one of the early pioneers  of string theory in the late 60´s. The Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude and  the famous  infinite dimensional Virasoro Algebra will bear his name forever, as central concepts in the theory of two-dimensional conformal fields and string theory.  In the 80´s, together with Giorgio Parisi and Marc Mezard, he also contributed foundational work on the theory of spin glasses. 
Miguel Angel Virasoro was the director of the ICTP in Trieste between 1995 and 2002, taking over from Abdus Salam, the founder of the institute, and was distinguished with the Dirac Medal in 2020. He was a long time friend of the IFT, and served as a member of Scientific Advisory Committee from the early days of the IFT up to 2018.
 

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