Francesco Guerra


Francesco Guerra was an Italian mathematical physicist, whose main research contributions were in quantum field theory and spin glasses.

Life and career

Guerra received his degree from the University of Naples in 1964. From 1976 to 1979 he was the director of the physics department of University of Salerno. He was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Sapienza Università di Roma since 1979. In 1983 and 1984, he served as Director of the Department of Mathematics, and from 1995 to 2001, he was Director of the Department of Physics.
Guerra was a plenary speaker at the European Congress of Mathematicians in 2004 and at the International Congress on Mathematical Physics in 2006.
Guerra died on 19 June 2025, at the age of 82.

Research

Guerra was known for his work on quantum field theory and his deep and original contributions to the mathematical theory of spin glasses.
With Fabio Toninelli, he proved the existence of the thermodynamic limit of the free energy in the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model; his discovery of the broken replica symmetry bound lead to the proof of the Parisi formula; and the Ghirlanda-Guerra identities have been shown to explain the emergence of ultrametricity in spin glasses.

Selected publications

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Documentary