Andrew Strominger

Andrew E. Strominger
Andy Strominger at Harvard
Born	1955 (age 68–69)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard University (B.A., 1977) University of California, Berkeley (M.A., 1979) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1982)
Known for	Contributions to: String theory Quantum gravity dS/CFT correspondence
Awards	Physics Frontiers Breakthrough Prize (2012) Klein Medal (2014) Dirac Medal (2014) Dannie Heineman Prize (2016)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Harvard University

Andrew Eben Strominger is an American theoretical physicist who is the Director of Harvard's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. He has made significant contributions to quantum gravity and string theory. These include his work on Calabi-Yau compactification and topology change in string theory, and on the stringy origin of black hole entropy. He is a senior fellow at the Society of Fellows, and is the Gwill E. York Professor of Physics.

Strominger completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard in 1977 before attending the University of California, Berkeley for his Masters. He received his PhD from MIT in 1982 under the supervision of Roman Jackiw. Prior to joining Harvard as a professor in 1997, he held a faculty position at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of over 200 publications.

Research

Notable contributions

• a paper with Cumrun Vafa that explains the microscopic origin of the black hole entropy, originally calculated thermodynamically by Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein, from string theory
• a paper with Philip Candelas, Gary Horowitz, and Edward Witten in the 1980s about the relevance of Calabi-Yau manifolds for obtaining the Standard Model from string theory
• other articles discussing the dS/CFT correspondence and the Kerr/CFT correspondence (variations of the AdS/CFT correspondence)
• S-branes (a variation of D-branes)
• OM-theory (with Shiraz Minwalla and Nathan Seiberg)
• noncommutative solitons (with Shiraz Minwalla and Rajesh Gopakumar)
• massless black holes in the form of wrapped D3-branes that regulate the physics of a conifold and allow topology change
• the SYZ conjecture, an interpretation of mirror symmetry as a special case of T-duality (with Eric Zaslow and Shing-Tung Yau)
• purely cubic action for string field theory
• superstrings with torsion
• a study of the relationship between asymptotic symmetries in asymptotically flat space-times, soft theorems and memory effects
• an analytic calculation of the exact spectrum of gravitational wave emission from extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs) into rapidly rotating black holes (these gravitational waves are expected to be detected with future space-based gravitational wave detectors such as eLISA

Awards

In recognition of his accomplishments, Strominger has been awarded numerous prizes, fellowships, and honorary professorships. These include the Klein Medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the 2014 Dirac Medal from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, which he received for his contributions to the origin, development, and further understanding of string theory. Furthermore, he received the Physics Frontiers Breakthrough Prize from the Milner Foundation along with colleague Cumrun Vafa in 2014. This award was bestowed upon the pair in honor of their "numerous deep and groundbreaking contributions to quantum field theory, quantum gravity, string theory and geometry." The Foundation also recognized their "joint statistical derivation of the Bekenstein-Hawking area-entropy relation unified the laws of thermodynamics with the laws of black hole dynamics and revealed the holographic nature of quantum spacetime."

External links

• Home page of Strominger at Harvard
• Harvard Physics Department Newsletter describing the Strominger group's research (pp. 21-25)
• Strominger's articles in the INSPIRE-HEP database