Topic:What is String Theory?
Speaker: Prof. Christopher Hull
Coordinates: Classroom 2105, 16:00, Thursday, July 2
Abstract: String theory is around 50 years old and for much of that time it has been proclaimed as a quantum theory of gravity unified with all forces and matter. However, we still don’t know its fundamental formulation, although we do now know it is not just a theory of strings. Nonetheless, it has led to many new and surprising insights, with concepts that were once seen as absolute now seen as relative. In this lecture I survey some of these insights and discuss their implications for physics and the fundamental formulation of string theory.
Speaker Profile: Christopher Hull is a professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London and an internationally renowned theoretical physicist. He has made pioneering contributions to theoretical and mathematical physics, particularly in superstring theory. He was awarded the Dirac Medal for theoretical physics by the Institute of Physics in 2003 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. Professor Hull has published nearly 200 research papers with close to 24,000 citations, and has held major academic leadership roles, including Head of the Theoretical Physics Group at Imperial College and organizer of leading international research programs in string theory.