Paul Kingsley Townsend FRS (/ˈtaʊnzənd/; born 3 March 1951) is a British physicist, currently a Professor of Theoretical Physics in Cambridge University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.[1] He is notable for his work on string theory.[2]
Education
He received his PhD from Brandeis University in 1976 for his dissertation The 1/N expansion of scalar field theories OCLC 22736707 supervised by Howard Joel Schnitzer. Since then he has over 320 publications.[3]
Work
In 1987, Eric Bergshoeff, Ergin Sezgin, and Paul Townsend showed that there are no superstrings in eleven dimensions (the largest number of dimensions consistent with a single graviton in supergravity theories),[4] but supermembranes.[5] In 1977 he was the first to formulate pure 4D N = 1 supergravity in anti-de Sitter space.[6]
Awards and honours
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2000.[7]
References
External links
- "Ehrenfest Colloquium Paul Townsend, 30 Sept. 2015". YouTube. Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics. 18 May 2016.
- "Joe Polchinski Memorial Lecture: A Brief History of Branes". YouTube. Int'l Centre for Theoretical Physics. 12 April 2019. (lecture by Paul Townsend)
- "Talk 2: Supersymmetry and RCHO revisited (Paul Townsend)". YouTube. Latham Boyle. 17 October 2021. (Workshop: Octonions and the Standard Model, Perimeter Institute, 2021)
- "Talk 12: Jordan algebras: from QM to 5D SUGRA to Stnd. Model? (Paul Townsend)". YouTube. Latham Boyle. 19 October 2021. (Workshop: Octonions and the Standard Model, Perimeter Institute, 2021)