Miranda Cheng
Miranda Chih-Ning Cheng (Chinese: 程之寧; born 6 June 1979, Taipei)[1] is a Taiwanese-born and Dutch-educated mathematician and theoretical physicist who works as an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam.[2] She is known for formulating the umbral moonshine conjectures[3][4] and for her work on the connections between K3 surfaces and string theory.[3]
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Early life[edit]
Cheng grew up in Taiwan, where she dropped out of school and left her parents' home to work at a record store and play in a punk rock band at the age of 16. Despite not completing high school, she was able to enter university through a program for gifted science students that she had gone through.[3]
Education[edit]
After graduating from the Department of Physics at National Taiwan University in 2001,[5][6] she moved to the Netherlands to continue her studies, and earned a master's degree in theoretical physics in 2003 from Utrecht University, under the supervision of Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft.[2] She completed her Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Amsterdam under the joint supervision of Erik Verlinde and Kostas Skenderis.[2][7] After postdoctoral study at Harvard University and working as a researcher at CNRS, she returned to Amsterdam in 2014, with a joint position in the Institute of Physics and Korteweg–de Vries Institute for Mathematics.[2]
Work with the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture[edit]
Cheng, along with John Duncan of Case Western Reserve University and Jeffrey Harvey of the University of Chicago, formulated the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture in 2012, providing evidence of 23 new moonshines.[3] They postulated that for each of these moonshines, there is a string theory, in which the string states are counted by the mock modular forms and the finite group captures the model’s symmetry.[8] In reference to the string theory underlying umbral moonshine, Cheng said that “it suggests that there’s a special symmetry acting on the physical theory of K3 surfaces.”[4]
References[edit]
- ^ C. Cheng, 1979 at the University of Amsterdam Album Academicum.
- ^ a b c d Curriculum vitae, retrieved 2016-08-02.
- ^ a b c d Wolchover, Natalie (August 4, 2016), "Moonshine Master Toys With String Theory: The physicist-mathematician Miranda Cheng is working to harness a mysterious connection between string theory, algebra and number theory", Quanta.
- ^ a b Klarreich, Erica (April 7, 2015), "Mathematicians Chase Moonshine's Shadow: Researchers are on the trail of a mysterious connection between number theory, algebra and string theory", Scientific American
- ^ "Google Groups". groups.google.com.
- ^ "國立臺灣大學理學院". www.science.ntu.edu.tw.
- ^ Miranda Cheng at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Cheng, Miranda C. N; Harrison, Sarah (2014). "Umbral Moonshine and K3 Surfaces". arXiv:1406.0619 [hep-th].
External links[edit]
- 1979 births
- Living people
- 21st-century Dutch mathematicians
- 21st-century Dutch scientists
- Dutch women mathematicians
- Dutch physicists
- Dutch women physicists
- Taiwanese mathematicians
- Taiwanese physicists
- Taiwanese women physicists
- Scientists from Taipei
- Utrecht University alumni
- University of Amsterdam alumni
- University of Amsterdam faculty
- Taiwanese emigrants to the Netherlands
- 21st-century women mathematicians
