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Milestone Year
1997
Introducing the Stochastic Loewner Evolution
A Weizmann mathematician introduced and developed the Stochastic Loewner Evolution, tying probability theory to complex analysis in a completely novel and revolutionary way.
SLE is a family of random planar curves that have been proven to be the scaling limit of a large variety of different two-dimensional lattice models in statistical mechanics including critical percolation, the Ising model, and the Gaussian free field.
Discribing the large scale interfaces created in most natural random media, it allows for a rigorous study of conformal field theory. Using SLE, long standing open problems were resolved. For example, establishing the non-intersections probabilities of random walks paths on the planar grid. This work opened the door to a new field of research, which is still very active and expected to be so for the future.
Image by Scott Sheffield