Frank Wilczek is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and a Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He received his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics at the University of Chicago, a Master of Arts in Mathematics at Princeton University, and a PhD in Physics at Princeton University. Wilczek worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was also a visiting professor at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 2002. Wilczek won the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society in 2003. In the same year he was awarded the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Commemorative Medal from Charles University in Prague. He was the co-recipient of the 2003 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society. Wilczek was also the co-recipient of the 2005 King Faisal International Prize for Science. He currently serves on the board for Society for Science & the Public.

Professor Wilczek, along with Professor David Gross and H. David Politzer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for their discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction. Wilczek has helped reveal and develop axions, anyons, asymptotic freedom, the color superconducting phases of quark matter, and other aspects of quantum field theory. He has worked on an unusually wide range of topics, ranging across condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and particle physics. His current research involves “pure” particle physics—connections between theoretical ideas and observable phenomena, behavior of matter—phase structure of quark matter at ultra-high temperature and density, color superconductivity, application of particle physics to cosmology, application of field theory techniques to condensed matter physics, and quantum theory of black holes.