Nima Arkani-Hamed

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Prof. Nima Arkani-Hamed in his office at Harvard University

Nima Arkani-Hamed (born 1972) is a leading particle physicist and applied string theorist. He was born in the USA to Iranian parents (also physicists), became a Canadian citizen, and now is a full professor at Harvard University.

Arkani-Hamed graduated from the University of Toronto with a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics, and went to the University of California, Berkeley for his graduate studies, where he worked under the supervision of Lawrence Hall. He graduated in 1997 and went to SLAC for post-doctoral studies. During this time he worked with Savas Dimopoulos and this is when the idea of large extra dimensions emerged. In 1999 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley physics department. He took a leave of absence from Berkeley to visit Harvard University in the spring 2001. Shortly after arriving at Harvard he worked with Howard Georgi and Andrew Cohen on idea of emergent extra dimensions, dubbed deconstruction. These ideas eventually led to the development of little Higgs theories. He officially joined Harvard's faculty in the fall of 2002. Arkani-Hamed has appeared on various television programmes and newspapers talking about space, time and dimensions and the current state of theoretical physics. In the summer of 2005 while at Harvard he won the 'Phi Beta Kappa' award for teaching excellence.