This spring, Katepalli Sreenivasan will become the third director—and the first experimentalist—to head the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. Sreenivasan, a 55-year-old fluid physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park, will succeed Miguel Virasoro, who stepped down this past May because he had reached the mandatory retirement age of 62. Virasoro has returned to the University of Rome I (“La Sapienza”). Serving as ICTP interim director until Sreenivasan begins his five-year term is Erio Tosatti, a condensed matter theorist from the neighboring International School for Advanced Studies.
Founded in 1964 by Pakistani theoretical physicist and future Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, the ICTP aims to foster the growth of advanced studies and research in physics and mathematics in developing countries (see the article by Juan Roederer, Physics Today, September 2001, page 31). That’s what persuaded Sreenivasan to accept the directorship despite his recent...
