Dam Thanh Son

Theorist whose work transcends boundaries between string theory, QCD and other gauge theories, nuclear physics, and many-body atomic and condensed matter systems. Using QCD, computed the superconducting gap in high density quark matter and coauthored first careful analytical study of thermalization rates in heavy-ion collisions. Best known for exploiting the duality between gauge theory and anti-de Sitter gravity to further understanding of the properties of QCD and strongly-interacting nonrelativistic many-body systems. Fundamental results include the derivation the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density for strongly interacting quantum field theories from gauge/gravity/duality. Also contributed to the BEC/BCS crossover in cold, dilute atomic gases, hydrodynamics as an effective field theory, and the properties of grapheme, as well as recent application of diffeomorphism invariance to constrain the effective theory for fractional quantum Hall states, allowing for clean separation of universal from nonuniversal properties of such systems.