Sidney Richard Coleman (7 March 1937 – 18 November 2007) was an American theoretical physicist noted for his research in high-energy physics.

"He was a giant in a peculiar sense, because he's not known to the general populace," Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow told the Boston Globe.

A quote from his introduction to the book is worth sharing here:[6] I first came to Erice in 1966, to lecture at the fourth of the annual schools on subnuclear physics organized by Nino Zichichi.

I was charmed by the beauty of Erice, fascinated by the thick layers of Sicilian culture and history, and terrified by the iron rule with which Nino kept the students and faculty in line.

And what a triumph it was, in the old sense of the word: a glorious victory parade, full of wonderful things brought back from far places to make the spectator gasp with awe and laugh with joy.

Students in one quantum field theory[7] course created T-shirts bearing his image and a collection of his more noted quotations, among them: "Not only God knows, I know, and by the end of the semester, you will know."

That award praised his "lucid, insightful, and influential reviews on partially conserved currents, gauge theories, instantons, and magnetic monopoles—subjects fundamental to theoretical physics.

He was one of the founders of Advent: Publishers[11] and occasionally reviewed genre books for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.