Prof. WEN, Xiao-Gang

Professor Xiao-Gang Wen, winner of OYRA in 1994, received his B.S. degree from the Univ of Sci. Tech of China in 1982, his M.S. in 1983 and Ph.D. in 1987 both from Princeton Univ. His Ph.D. thesis director was Prof. Ed Witten. He was a member of the Inst of Theor Phys at UC Santa Barbara from 1987 to 1989, a five-year member of the Inst. of Advanced Study from 1989 to 1991. He started his assistant professorship at MIT in 1991. He has been a Sloan Foundation fellow.

Prof. Xiao-Gang Wen was cited for his creative contributions to theoretical condensed matter physics in the area of strongly correlated systems, in particular, in the theory of high Tc superconductors and fractional quantum Hall effect. In a classical paper with Wilczek and Zee, he provided the first systematic formulation of the chiral spin liquid state, a novel candidate ground state for the strong correlation model of the high Tc superconductors. His most influential work lies in the area of fractional quantum Hall effect. He was the first to recognize that the edge excitation in a quantum Hall state is an example of the chiral Luttinger liquid. He showed how the study of the edge state can distinguish between the topological order of the different quantum Hall states. He proposed concrete experimental tests of his ideas and theoretical predictions. His work has stimulated much theoretical activities and experimental work as well.


Selection Panel: Paul Chu, T.D. Lee, Frank Shu, Dan Tsui, C.N. Yang.