Xenia de la Ossa

Xenia de la Ossa Osegueda (born 30 June 1958, San José, Costa Rica) is a theoretical physicist whose research focuses on mathematical structures that arise in string theory.[1] She is a professor at Oxford's Mathematical Institute.[2]

This article uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is de la Ossa and the second or maternal family name is Osegueda.

Academic career

Xenia de la Ossa received her PhD from University of Texas at Austin with the dissertation Quantum Calabi-Yau Manifolds and Mirror Symmetry written under the supervision of Willy Fischler.[3]

She was at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1993 to 1995.[4]

Picture taken in the garden at the location of Geometric, Algebraic and Topological Methods for Quantum Field Theory Villa de Leyva Summer School – 2017.
Picture taken during a lecture of professor Xenia de la Ossa at the Geometric, Algebraic and Topological Methods for Quantum Field Theory Villa de Leyva Summer School – 2017[5].

Xenia de la Ossa is known for her contributions to mathematical physics with much of her work focusing on string theory and its interplay with algebraic geometry. In 1991, she coauthored "A pair of Calabi-Yau manifolds as an exactly soluble superconformal theory",[6] which contained remarkable predictions about the number of rational curves on a quintic threefold.[7] This was the first work to use mirror symmetry in order to make enumerative predictions in algebraic geometry, which moreover went far beyond what could be proved at the time using the available techniques within the area.[8]

This paper was cited in the more important books about String Theory. In 2004, Roger Penrose mentioned it in his book The Road to Reality:

But having said that, I have to admit to there being the appearance of something of genuine significance ‘going on behind the scenes’ in some aspects of string/ M-theory. As the mathematician, Richard Thomas, of Imperial College London remarked to me, in an e-mail message: ‘’ I can’t emphasize enough how deep some of these dualities are: they constantly surprise us with new predictions. They show up structure never thought possible. Mathematicians confidently predicted several times that these things weren’t possible, but people like Candelas, de la Ossa, et al. have shown this to be wrong. Every prediction made, suitably interpreted mathematically, has turned out to be correct. And not for any conceptual maths reason so far – we have no idea why they’re true, we just compute both sides independently and indeed find the same structures, symmetries and answers on both sides. To a mathematician these things cannot be coincidence, they must come from a higher reason. And that reason is the assumption that this big mathematical theory describes nature…’’.[9]

The breakthrough enumerative predictions of the de la Ossa et al paper were eventually confirmed for low degrees of the curves (up to 9) and required corrections in higher degree.

Professor de la Ossa has belonged to scientific committees of several organizations for the promotion of scientific events in Latin America, among them the Mesoamerican Centre for Theoretical Physics[10] and the School of Mathematics of Latin America and the Caribbean.[11] She has been invited as speaker to many conferences at important academic institutions around the world.[12][13][14] [15][16]

She has also been principal investigator for the project entitled Vacuum States of the Heterotic String,[17] supported by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).[18]

Personal life

Xenia de la Ossa is married to British physicist and mathematician Philip Candelas and has two daughters.[19][20]

gollark: Er, they did?
gollark: The stuff in the second list is what it needs to do to be *cooler*.
gollark: The stuff in the first list is what it needs to do *that*.
gollark: minoteaur is not ready to replace the random dokuwiki installation I use right now.
gollark: Advanced somewhat metaprogramming-capable graph-structured note-taking engines are the trendy thing right now.

References
  1. Scientific publications on INSPIRE-HEP
  2. Academic Faculty - University of Oxford
  3. Xenia de la Ossa at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. Scholars - Institute for Advanced Study
  5. Geometric, Algebraic and Topological Methods for Quantum Field Theory Villa de Leyva Summer School – 2017
  6. Philip Candelas; Xenia de la Ossa; Paul S. Green; Linda Parkes (1991), "A pair of Calabi-Yau manifolds as an exactly soluble superconformal theory", Nuclear Physics B, 359 (1): 21–74, Bibcode:1991NuPhB.359...21C, doi:10.1016/0550-3213(91)90292-6
  7. Hori, Kentaro; Katz, Sheldon; Klemm, Albrecht; Pandharipande, Rahul; Thomas, Richard; Vafa, Cumrun; Vakil, Ravi; Zaslow, Eric (2003). Mirror symmetry. Clay Mathematics Monographs. 1. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 0-8218-2955-6.
  8. Cox, David A.; Katz, Sheldon (1999). Mirror symmetry and algebraic geometry. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 0-8218-1059-6.
  9. Penrose, Roger (2004). The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. London: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0679454434.
  10. Mesoamerican Centre for Theoretical Physics
  11. School of Mathematics of Latin America and the Caribbean
  12. JDG 2002: Fifth Conference on Geometry and Topology
  13. Mathematics of String Theory
  14. Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics
  15. Institute for Basic Science(IBS)
  16. A celebration of Nigel Hitchin's 70th birthday in honour of his contributions to mathematics
  17. Vacuum States of the Heterotic String
  18. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
  19. "CANDELAS, Prof. Philip". Who's Who. ukwhoswho.com. 2017 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription or UK public library membership required) (subscription required)
  20. "Philip Candelas's CV" (PDF). www.maths.ox.ac.uk.
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