Stephen Shenker
Encyclopedia
Stephen Hart Shenker is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 theoretical physicist
Theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...

 who works on string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...

. He is a professor at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and former director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics
Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics
The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics is an umbrella organization supporting research at Stanford in High Energy and Condensed Matter theoretical physics.-External links:*...

. His brother Scott Shenker
Scott Shenker
Scott Shenker is a Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley. He is also the head of the Networking Group and the Vice President of the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California. He received his Sc.B. in Physics from Brown University in 1978, and his PhD in Physics from...

 is a computer scientist. His contributions to physics include:
  • Basic results on the phase structure of gauge theories (with Eduardo Fradkin)
  • Basic results on two dimensional conformal field theory and its relation to string theory (with Daniel Friedan
    Daniel Friedan
    Daniel Harry Friedan is an American theoretical physicist and is one of two sons of the feminist author and activist Betty Friedan. He earned his Ph.D...

    , Emil Martinec
    Emil Martinec
    Emil John Martinec is an American theoretical physicist born in 1958. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1979 and obtained his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1984. He spent the last two years of his graduate education at SLAC after his dissertation advisor, Michael Peskin, left...

    , Zongan Qiu, and others)
  • The nonperturbative formulation of matrix models of low dimensional string theory, the first nonperturbative definitions of string theory (with Michael R. Douglas
    Michael R. Douglas
    Michael R. Douglas is an American theoretical physicist and professor currently at Stony Brook University.Michael R. Douglas was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Nancy and Ronald G. Douglas, a mathematician specializing in operator algebras. He received his bachelor's degree in physics...

    )
  • The discovery of distinctively stringy nonperturbative effects in string theory, later understood to be caused by D-branes. These effects play a major role in string dynamics
  • The discovery of Matrix Theory, the first nonperturbative definition of String/M theory in a physical number of dimensions. Matrix Theory (see Matrix string theory
    Matrix string theory
    In physics, Matrix string theory is a set of equations that describe superstring theory in a non-perturbative framework. Type IIA string theory can be shown to be equivalent to a maximally supersymmetric two-dimensional gauge theory, the gauge group of which is U for a large value of N...

     ) is now understood to be a special case of the AdS/CFT correspondence (with Tom Banks
    Tom Banks
    Thomas Banks, Tom Banks, or Tommy Banks may refer to:*Tom Banks , player and administrator with Fitzroy Football Club*Thomas Banks , English sculptor*Tom Banks , American physicist...

    , Willy Fischler
    Willy Fischler
    Willy Fischler born in 1949 in Antwerpen, Belgium is a theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is currently the Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is affiliated with the Weinberg theory group.Fischler is, among other things,...

     and Leonard Susskind
    Leonard Susskind
    Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology...

    )
  • The discovery of the first distinct signature of the black hole singularity in AdS/CFT (with Lukasz Fidkowski, Veronika Hubeny and Matthew Kleban)

External links

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