The YITP is delighted with the news that Professor Martin Rocek has been appointed as Distinguished Professor in recognition of his foundational contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics, and for his leading role in a rebirth of the historic dialogue between these fields. In over forty years of research at the highest level, Martin has forged new methods and created new bridges between these disciplines, launched careers and made possible new centers of learning.

In addition to his groundbreaking research, Martin's devotion to the growth of his students' knowledge and encouragement of their careers is legendary.  His record and reputation of innovative, interdisciplinary research and mentorship has enabled him to facilitate a new era of collaboration between mathematics and physics, including the establishment of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University, making it a world center for activity in these fields.  His work has brought distinction to the Institute and to Stony Brook University, and has contributed mightily to its status as a destination for physicists and mathematicians worldwide.

Among many research highlights, Martin developed the formalism known as supergraphs, which is essential to the calculation of fundamental properties of supersymmetric quantum field theories, making possible theoretical advances that continue to the present day. He is an author, with Professor Emeritus Warren Siegel, S. James Gates and Marcus Grisaru, of one of the foundational textbooks on supersymmetry, which remains deeply influential in the field. In another breakthrough, he showed how the physics concepts embedded in supersymmetric quantum field theories serve as organizing concepts for the creation of Riemannian spaces called Hyperkahler Manifolds, which reflect essential features of general relativity, of classical and of quantum mechanics. This connection has become part of the shared language of modern geometry, of string theory, gravity, and quantum field theory, facilitating new ideas and results.  These and other of his advances, recognizing new theories inspired by, and often inspiring, new mathematics, have had a deep and abiding influence on the ongoing development of contemporary mathematics and quantum field theories, supergravity and string theory, and have opened new pathways connecting theoretical physics and geometry.