Gabriele Veneziano was born in Florence. In 1965, he earned his Laurea in Theoretical Physics from the University of Florence under the direction of Raoul Gatto [it]. He pursued his doctoral studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and obtained his PhD in 1967 under the supervision of Hector Rubinstein. During his stay in Israel, he collaborated, among others, with Marco Ademollo (a professor in Florence) and Miguel Virasoro (an Argentinian physicist who later became a professor in Italy). During his years at MIT, he collaborated with many colleagues, primarily with Sergio Fubini (an MIT professor, later a member of the Theory Division and of the Directorate at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland).
Between 1968 and 1972 he worked at MIT and was a summer visitor of the Theory Division at CERN. In 1972 he accepted the Amos de Shalit Professor of Physics chair at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. In 1976-1978 he accepted a permanent position in the Theory Division at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, a position that he held until the age of retirement in 2007 and where he has been since then Honorary member. Between 1994 and 1997, he was Director of the Theory Division. He also held the chair of Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology at the College of France in Paris, France (2004-2013), of which he is currently an Honorary Professor. He visited many Universities all over the world. More recently he was Global Distinguished Professor at New York University and is Sackler Professor at Tel-Aviv University.
Research
Gabriele Veneziano first formulated the foundations of string theory in 1968 when he discovered a string picture that could describe the interaction of strongly interacting particles.[4][5][6] Veneziano discovered that the EulerBeta function, interpreted as a scattering amplitude, has many of the features needed to explain the physical properties of strongly interacting particles. This amplitude, known as the Veneziano amplitude, is interpreted as the scattering amplitude for four open stringtachyons. In retrospect this work is now considered the founding of string theory although at the time it was not apparent the string picture would lead to a new theory of quantum gravity.
Veneziano's work led to intense research to try to explain the strong force by a field theory of strings about one fermi in length. The rise of quantum chromodynamics, a rival explanation of the strong force, led to a temporary loss of interest in string theories until the 1980s when interest was revived.
In 1991, he published a paper[7] that shows how an inflationary cosmological model can be obtained from string theory, thus opening the door to a description of string cosmologicalpre-big bang scenarios.
^Di Vecchia, P. (2008). "The Birth of String Theory"(PDF). In Gasperini, Maurizio; Maharana, Jnan (eds.). String Theory and Fundamental Interactions – Gabriele Veneziano and Theoretical Physics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Lecture Notes in Physics. Vol. 737. Springer. pp. 59–118. ISBN978-3-540-74232-6. LCCN2007934340. OL16156324M. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2 September 2011.
