8th International Summer School/Conference
LET'S FACE CHAOS THROUGH NONLINEAR DYNAMICS
Center for Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
CAMTP, University of Maribor, Slovenia
26 June - 10 July 2011

The 8th School/Conference Is Dedicated to the 65th Birthday of Professor Predrag Cvitanović of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

Professor Predrag Cvitanović is one of the five Honorary Directors of our Schools & Conferences, and one of the most outstanding invited lecturers since 1999. He is one of the pioneers of classical and quantum chaos, but his scientific opus is wider than that, as he has been actively and successfully working in the quantum field theory, group theory from the point of view of a theoretical physicist, especially applied in the QCD, fluid dynamics and turbulence, and nonlinear classical field theories. He describes himself "not merely as a nonlinear dynamicist, but as a theorist with theoretical and mathematical physics interests in quantum theory, statistical mechanics, dynamical systems theory and computational physics. The actual work spans such seemingly disparate topics as applications of group theory to particle physics, study of topology of hyperbolic flows, or advising experimentalists on analysis of their data". One of his outstanding contributions is his formulation of the universal equation for the period doubling (Feigenbaum 1978 and 1979 papers), which has since then played also a key role in the theory of transition to turbulence. His numerous fundamental papers are classical research papers and have influenced the development of classical and quantum chaos, as well as turbulence theory.

Predrag Cvitanović's contributions to the foundations of nonlinear dynamics span a broad range of physical problems, from renormalization in transitions to chaos to periodic orbit theory of quantum systems to dynamical theory of hydrodynamical turbulence.

In 1976 he derived in collaboration with M.J. Feigenbaum the universal equation for period doubling. In order to describe the topological structure of "strange attractors" of Henon type, he introduced the notion of pruning front, still actively investigated by both physicists and mathematicians. Cvitanović's highly cited contributions to nonlinear dynamics include introduction of "cycle expansions" and their applications to semiclassical quantization, "wave chaos" in acoustics, symmetry decomposition of dynamical zeta functions, and discovery of phase transitions on "strange sets". Recently he has worked towards a periodic orbit theory of spatiotemporal turbulence of infinite dimensional dynamical systems such as boundary shear flows.

Other frequently cited contributions include T. Kinoshita and P.C. calculation of the sixth-order magnetic moment of the electron, his group theory for Feynman diagrams in non-Abelian gauge theories, his "Magic Triangle" for exceptional Lie algebras, and his planar field theory.

Cvitanović is also known for his monographs/webbooks on Field Theory, Group Theory, and Chaos.

Professor Predrag Cvitanović is not only influential in the scientific research community and in the organization of science worldwide, but also - very importantly - always promotes young scientists all over the world. Many of them had the lucky chance to be his PhD students or postdocs, either in Atlanta, or formerly in Chicago and Copenhagen. His generosity is well known, and he has been also a donator of CAMTP as early as in 1999, helping us build up our institute's library. It is crucial to point out that his life opus is by no means concluded, on the contrary, he keeps on working with great intensity and we are happy to have the opportunity at this School and Conference to listen to his lectures on the fluid dynamics and turbulence (a 5-hours lecture course) and also to follow his account of the most recent results.

We are looking forward to honour him in Maribor, on occasion of his 65th birthday, combining wonderful science with wonderful music. All this happening will be taking place not so far from his beautiful home country, Croatia, our neighbour and friend.

Last modified: 27 December 2010
by chaos@uni-mb.si