Sekazi K. Mtingwa is an American theoretical high-energy physicist. He is a co-recipient of the 2017 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. He is the first African-American to be awarded the prize. Mtingwa was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2008 for "his definitive treatment of Intrabeam scattering, his contributions to the wakefield acceleration, and his early recognition of the fixed target physics potential of the next generationelectron-positron collider." He also co-founded the National Society of Black Physicists in 1977 and served in various other national and international initiatives.
Biography
Mtingwa was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied physics and pure mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his B.S. degrees in 1971. Afterwards, he joined graduate school at Princeton University, where he was awarded a Ph. D. degree in theoretical high energy physics in 1976. The title of his PhD thesis is "Asymptotic chiral invariance and its consequences." In 1981, he became a research physicist at Fermilab in Illinois. In joint work with James Bjorken, an American theoretical physicist who is Emeritus Professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, he developed a theory of "intrabeam scattering" in particle accelerators. For this work, he was awarded the 2017 Robert E. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators, since that theory "empowered major discoveries in a broad range of disciplines by a wide variety of accelerators, including hadron colliders, damping rings/linear colliders, and low emittance synchrotron light sources." While at Fermilab, he also contributed in a significant way to two of the antiproton source accelerator systems, which were instrumental in particle discoveries, including that of the top quark. In 1988–1991, Mtingwa was at Argonne National Laboratory. Starting in 1991, he joined the faculty at North Carolina A&T State University. He has been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University. Sekazi Mtingwa is a founder of the African Laser Centre and a cofounder of Triangle Science, Education & Economic Development, a consulting company that supports underrepresented groups in STEM. Mtingwa is a cofounder and former president of the National Society of Black Physicists. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
