This is an announcement for the paper "A characterization of the mixed discriminant" by D.I. Florentin, V.D. Milman, and R. Schneider. Abstract: We characterize the mixed discriminant of positive semi definite matrices using its most basic properties. As a corollary we establish its minimality among non negative and multi additive functionals. Archive classification: math.FA Submitted from: danflorentin@gmail.com The paper may be downloaded from the archive by web browser from URL http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/1309.4798 or http://arXiv.org/abs/1309.4798