Jakob Yngvason


Jakob Yngvason is an Icelandic/Austrian physicist and emeritus professor of mathematical physics at the University of Vienna. He has made important contributions to local quantum field theory, thermodynamics, and the quantum theory of many-body systems, in particular cold atomic gases and Bose–Einstein condensation. He is co-author, together with Elliott H. Lieb, Jan Philip Solovej and Robert Seiringer, of a monograph on Bose gases

Life

After graduating from high school in 1964 in Reykjavík, Yngvason studied physics at Göttingen University, obtaining his Diploma in physics in 1969 and dr.rer.nat. in 1973. His thesis advisor was Hans-Jürgen Borchers. Yngvason was assistant professor at the University of Göttingen 1973–1978, 1978–1985 research scientist at the Science Institute of the University of Iceland and 1985–1996 professor of theoretical physics at the University of Iceland. In 1996 he became professor of mathematical physics at the University of Vienna, where he is emeritus professor since October 2014. He was president of the Erwin Schrödinger Institute for Mathematical Physics in Vienna 1998-2003 and scientific director of the institute 2004-2011. He was vice-president of the International Association of Mathematical Physics 2000–2005 and editor-in-chief of Reviews in Mathematical Physics 2006-2010. He is a member of the Societas Scientiarum Islandica and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, Copenhagen. For his work on Thermodynamics he received, together with
Lieb, the Levi Conant Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 2002. In 2004 he received the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is married to Guðrún Kvaran, professor of lexicography at the University of Iceland; they have two children.