| Abstract: | Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Physics at Stanford University. He is widely regarded as one of the fathers of String Theory. He is the recipient of the J.J. Sajurai Prize for theoretical physics (1998), and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Susskind is also the author of a popular book on String Theory "The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design". In it he describes in simple terms what appears to be a paradigm shift in String Theory, and actually in theoretical High Energy Physics in general, which is due to the incredibly large number of solutions of String Theory. Susskind also contributed to the theory of quark confinement, lattice gauge theory, technicolor theory, baryogenesis, black hole thermodynamics and the holographic principle. Susskind gave a physics seminar on the question of black hole thermodynamics, and how trying to understand this in string theory has led to the "holographic principle" of quantum gravity. He also gave a physics department colloquium on the string theory landscape. |
