In Memoriam

In Memoriam: Ian Affleck (1952-2024)

This memorial celebrates the life of a towering figure of modern theoretical physics: Ian Affleck.

Born in Vancouver, he was Killam University Professor at the Department of Physics & Astronomy of the University of British Columbia. Although most often recognized as a condensed matter theorist, the range of his noteworthy contributions transcends simple classification, with influential results in high-energy physics and trend-setting inspirations for experimental condensed matter. Besides his research, he was also a highly inspirational mentor who greatly impacted the lives and careers of many researchers.

We invite community members to contribute to this Collection

We welcome contributions to this Memorial in a range of different formats:

• informal pieces (not research-level material), to be published in SciPost Commemorations
• research-level papers dedicated to Ian's memory, to be published in one of our Physics journals (new research: SciPost Physics or SciPost Physics Core; lecture notes: SciPost Physics Lecture Notes; reviews: SciPost Reviews, etc).

In your papers, you are most welcome to include a personal dedication to Ian, for example below the title / before the abstract, before the introduction, or in the Acknowledgements.

Submission instructions

You can submit your material by going to our submission facilities (login required).

The further procedure depends on the type of material you would like to contribute:

• for an informal piece (targeting publication in SciPost Commemorations), you should choose the New Submission (Multidisciplinary) route and then pick SciPost Commemorations as the target journal.

• for a scientific piece (targeting publication in one of our Physics journals), you can instead proceed by choosing the New submission in Physics route, and then choosing your preferred journal from our available list.

In all cases, in the submission form, please specify "For inclusion in the In Memoriam: Ian Affleck Collection." in the Remarks for editors field.

Submissions will undergo the evaluation protocol specified for the target journal.

All ensuing Publications will be listed here once they are published.

Timescale

Although there is no deadline, we recommend authors to submit their contributions by 2026-05-01. Later submissions will however still be considered for inclusion in the Collection.

Editors:

• Masaki Oshikawa
• Hubert Saleur
• Marcel Franz
• Andreas Ludwig
• Collin Broholm
• Nathan Seiberg
• Jean-Sébastien Caux

Going further

We are also considering organizing an in-person meeting at some point in the future. We are open to your suggestions for the most appropriate format, location and timing for such a meeting.

Contributions published in other venues

If you have dedicated a piece to Ian which has been published in any alternative (external to SciPost) venue (be that a scientific journal, university information page, blog post or other), and you would like a link to this material to be included in this Memorial, simply get in touch with us at edadmin@scipost.org with the relevant details.