Lisa Randall

Lisa Randall
Lisa Randall at TED
Born	(1962-06-18) June 18, 1962 Queens, New York City, New York, United States
Residence	Massachusetts, United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory University of California, Berkeley Princeton University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Harvard University
Alma mater	Stuyvesant High School Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Howard Georgi
Doctoral students	Csaba Csáki, Eric Sather, Witold Skiba, Shu-fang Su, Emanuel Katz, Matthew Schwartz, Shiyamala Thambyahpillai, Liam Fitzpatrick
Known for	Randall–Sundrum model Warped Passages
Notable awards	Klopsteg Memorial Award, 2006. Lilienfeld Prize, 2007

Lisa Randall (born June 18, 1962) is an American theoretical physicist and a leading expert on particle physics and cosmology. She works on several of the competing models of string theory in the quest to explain the fabric of the universe. Her best known contribution to the field is the Randall–Sundrum model, first published in 1999 with Raman Sundrum. However, the Large Hadron Collider has failed to provide any evidence to substantiate the validity of this theory^{[citation needed]}. She was the first tenured woman in the Princeton University physics department and the first tenured female theoretical physicist at both MIT and Harvard University. She has also written two popular science books and the libretto of an opera.

Early life and education

Randall was born in Queens in New York City. She is an alumna of Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1980, where she was a classmate of fellow physicist and science popularizer Brian Greene. She won first place in the 1980 Westinghouse Science Talent Search at the age of 18. Randall earned an A.B. at Harvard in 1983, and obtained her Ph.D. in particle physics in 1987 under the direction of Howard Georgi. She was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. Randall was featured in Newsweek magazine's "Who's Next" issue of January 2, 2006, as "one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation."

Academia

Randall studies particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is a professor of theoretical physics. Her research concerns elementary particles and fundamental forces, and has involved the study of a wide variety of models, the most recent involving extra dimensions of space. She has also worked on supersymmetry, Standard Model observables, cosmic inflation, baryogenesis, grand unified theories, general relativity. Randall's book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions was included in the New York Times' 100 notable books of 2005.

Randall earned her PhD from Harvard University and held professorships at MIT and Princeton University before returning to Harvard in 2001. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and is a past winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1992, a DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In 2003, she received the Premio Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro Chisesi Award, from the Sapienza University of Rome. In autumn 2004, she was the most cited theoretical physicist of the previous five years. In 2006, she received the Klopsted Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). Professor Randall was featured in Seed magazine's “2005 Year in Science Icons ” and in Newsweek's “Who's Next in 2006”. She has helped organize numerous conferences and has been on the editorial board of several major theoretical physics journals.

Randall at TED 2006

Personal

Randall's sister, Dana Randall, is a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech.

In 2007, Randall was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People (Time 100) under the section for "Scientists & Thinkers". Randall was given this honor for her work regarding the evidence of a higher dimension.

Randall has written the libretto for an opera, Hypermusic Prologue: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes, in collaboration with the composer Hèctor Parra and IRCAM.

Bibliography

• Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. Ecco Press. 2005. ISBN 0-06-053108-8. 
• Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. Ecco. 2011. ISBN 0-06-172372-X. 

External links

• Professor Randall's website at Harvard
• Reprinted Op-Ed from The New York Times of Sunday, September 18, 2005
• Lisa Randall's Edge Bio Page
• On Gravity, Oreos and a Theory of Everything (New York Times, November 1, 2005)
• Radio Interview from This Week in Science May 9, 2006 Broadcast
• Profile in Scientific American October 2005
• Lisa Randall discusses "Warped Passages" on Thoughtcast
• Lisa Randall is interviewed by Charlie Rose