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 [de], Ergin Sezgin [de], 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

  1. ^ "DAMTP>>People>>Professor P.K. Townsend".
  2. ^ Townsend Home Page at Cambridge
  3. ^ "INSPIRE-HEP Search".
  4. ^ This was demonstrated in: Werner Nahm, "Supersymmetries and their representations". Nuclear Physics B 135 no 1 (1978) pp 149-166, doi:10.1016/0550-3213(78)90218-3
  5. ^ E. Bergshoeff, E. Sezgin and P. K. Townsend, "Supermembranes and Eleven-Dimensional Supergravity," Phys. Lett. B 189: 75 (1987).
  6. ^ Townsend, P.K. (1977). "Cosmological constant in supergravity". Phys. Rev. D. 15 (10): 2802–2804. Bibcode:1977PhRvD..15.2802T. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.15.2802.
  7. ^ "Lists of Royal Society Fellows 1660-2007". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 24 March 2010. Retrieved 19 July 2010.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Paul Townsend.


Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2000
Authority control databases
Categories