Integrable many-body systems and gauge theories

We review the study of the relation between integrable many-body systems and gauge theories. We show that the degrees of freedom of integrable systems are related to the topological degrees of freedom of gauge theories. We also describe the relation between families of integrable systems and N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories. We show that the degrees of freedom of many-body systems can be identified with the collective coordinates of string theory solitons, the D-branes.