Miguel Angel Virasoro and Steven Weinberg

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.