- This article is about physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and string theoristString theory is a developing branch of theoretical physics that combines quantum mechanics and general relativity into a quantum theory of gravity...
Michael Duff. For the British aristocrat, see Sir Michael Duff, 3rd Baronet.
Michael James Duff is Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Abdus Salam Chair of Theoretical Physics at
Imperial College LondonImperial College London is a British university in London specialising in science, engineering, medicine and business....
.
Duff was educated at
De La Salle CollegeDe La Salle College may refer to:* De La Salle College Ashfield, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia* De La Salle College Churchtown, in Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland* De La Salle College Dundalk, in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland...
, and
Queen Mary College, LondonQueen Mary, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London...
before obtaining his
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
degree in theoretical physics in 1972 at
Imperial College LondonImperial College London is a British university in London specialising in science, engineering, medicine and business....
, under Nobel Laureate
Abdus SalamAbdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, astrophysicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in Electro-Weak Theory. Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg shared the prize for this discovery...
.
- This article is about physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and string theoristString theory is a developing branch of theoretical physics that combines quantum mechanics and general relativity into a quantum theory of gravity...
Michael Duff. For the British aristocrat, see Sir Michael Duff, 3rd Baronet.
Michael James Duff is Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Abdus Salam Chair of Theoretical Physics at
Imperial College LondonImperial College London is a British university in London specialising in science, engineering, medicine and business....
.
Education
Duff was educated at
De La Salle CollegeDe La Salle College may refer to:* De La Salle College Ashfield, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia* De La Salle College Churchtown, in Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland* De La Salle College Dundalk, in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland...
, and
Queen Mary College, LondonQueen Mary, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London...
before obtaining his
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
degree in theoretical physics in 1972 at
Imperial College LondonImperial College London is a British university in London specialising in science, engineering, medicine and business....
, under Nobel Laureate
Abdus SalamAbdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, astrophysicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in Electro-Weak Theory. Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg shared the prize for this discovery...
. He did his postdoctoral fellowships in Trieste, Oxford,
King's College LondonKing's College London is a British higher education institution and co-founding constituent college of the University of London. Founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, its royal charter is predated, in England, only by those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge...
, Queen Mary College (London) and Brandeis University
Academic career
After his postdoctoral fellowships, he returned to Imperial College in 1979 on a Science Research Council Advanced Fellowship and joined the faculty there in 1980. He took leave of absence to visit the Theory Division in
CERNThe European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , , is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border, established in 1954...
, first in 1982 and then again as a Staff Member from 1984 to 1987 when he became Senior Physicist. He has also held Visiting Professorships and Fellowships at the University of Texas, Austin; the
University of California, Santa BarbaraThe University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Santa Barbara, California, northwest of Los Angeles...
, the University of Kyoto and the Isaac Newton Institute,
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
. He took up his professorship at
Texas A&M UniversityTexas A&M University, often referred to as A&M or TAMU, is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas. It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The seventh-largest university in the United States, A&M enrolls over 48,000 students in ten...
in 1988 and was appointed Distinguished Professor in 1992. In September 1999 he moved to the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
, where he is Oskar Klein Professor of Physics. In 2001, he was elected first Director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics and was re-elected in 2004. He returned again to Imperial College, London and became Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences in Spring 2005.
Contributions
His interests lie in unified theories of the elementary particles,
quantum gravityQuantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics attempting to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity in a self-consistent manner, or more precisely, to formulate a self-consistent theory which reduces to ordinary quantum mechanics in the limit of weak gravity and which reduces to...
,
supergravityIn theoretical physics, supergravity is a field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity...
, Kaluza-Klein theory, superstrings, supermembranes and
M-theoryIn theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified. Because the dimensionality exceeds the dimensionality of five superstring theories in 10 dimensions, it is believed that the 11-dimensional theory unifies all string theories...
. He is a member of Save British Science and has acted as spokesman for British Scientists Abroad, a group of expatriate scientists who are concerned about the underfunding of British science. He is a Fellow of the
American Physical SocietyThe American Physical Society was founded in 1899 and is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen science journals, including the world renowned Physical Review andPhysical Review Letters, and...
, a Fellow of the
Institute of PhysicsThe Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics,and is the UK and Ireland's main professional body for physicists...
(UK) and Recipient of the 2004 Meeting Gold Medal, El Colegio Nacional, Mexico.
He is the author of
The World in Eleven Dimensions: Supergravity, Supermembranes and M-theory, ISBN 0750306726.
External links