Steven Scott Gubser (May 4, 1972 – August 3, 2019) was a professor of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. His research focused on theoretical particle physics, especially string theory, and the

AdS/CFT correspondence In theoretical physics, the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. On one side are anti-de Sitter s ...

. He was a widely cited scholar in these and other related areas. Gubser did foundational work in the

as a graduate student. In particular, his 1998 paper ''Gauge Theory Correlators from Non-Critical String Theory'' with his advisor Igor Klebanov and another Princeton physics professor

Alexander Markovich Polyakov Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

, made a precise statement of the AdS/CFT duality. It is one of the all-time top cited papers in theoretical high-energy physics, and is commonly known, along with

Edward Witten Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, q ...

's 1998 work ''Anti De Sitter Space And Holography'', as the GKPW dictionary. After receiving a Ph.D. in 1998 from Princeton, Gubser became a

Junior Fellow The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

before taking a position as an assistant professor at Princeton. In 2001, he moved to the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

but returned to Princeton in 2002. Gubser's later works concern various aspects of the

, including its applications in quantum chromodynamics and condensed matter physics. In 2016 he and collaborators proposed a

p-adic In mathematics, the -adic number system for any prime number extends the ordinary arithmetic of the rational numbers in a different way from the extension of the rational number system to the real and complex number systems. The extensi ...

version of

whose bulk geometry is a tree graph. As a high school student in 1989, Gubser was the first American to be grand winner (ranked first among all gold medalists) of the

International Physics Olympiad The International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) is an annual physics competition for high school students. It is one of the International Science Olympiads. The first IPhO was held in Warsaw, Poland in 1967. Each national delegation is made up of at ...

. He graduated from

Cherry Creek High School Cherry Creek High School (commonly Cherry Creek, Creek, or CCHS) is the oldest of seven high schools in the Cherry Creek School District in the Denver metropolitan area. It is located in Greenwood Village, Colorado, and is one of the largest high s ...

Greenwood Village, Colorado The City of Greenwood Village is a home rule municipality located in Arapahoe County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 15,691 at the 2020 United States Census. Greenwood Village is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Met ...

. He graduated as the

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution. The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA ...

of the class of 1994 from Princeton University. For his senior thesis he was awarded the LeRoy Apker Award of the American Physical Society, the highest distinction for undergraduate research. Gubser died in a rock climbing accident in

Chamonix Chamonix-Mont-Blanc ( frp, Chamôni), more commonly known as Chamonix, is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. It was the site of the first Winter Olympics in 1924. In 2019, it had ...

, France, on August 3, 2019.

Awards

* 1994

LeRoy Apker Award The LeRoy Apker Award is a prize that has been awarded annually by the American Physical Society (APS) since 1978, named after the experimental physicist LeRoy Apker. The recipients are undergraduate students chosen for "outstanding achievements i ...

for outstanding undergraduate achievement from the American Physical Society * 2008 Blavatnik Award of the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wi ...

* 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship * 2011

Gribov Medal The Gribov Medal is a prize awarded every two years since 2001 by the European Physical Society for work in theoretical elementary particle physics or quantum field theory. It is awarded to younger physicists (age under 35) and is named after Vl ...

of the

European Physical Society The European Physical Society (EPS) is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to promote physics and physicists in Europe through methods such as physics outreach. Formally established in 1968, its membership includes the national physical so ...

* 2017 Simons Investigator

Personal life

Gubser was married to

Laura Landweber Laura Faye Landweber is an American evolutionary biologist. , she is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of biological sciences at Columbia University. Previously, she was a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at P ...

, and they had three daughters.

References

External links

Gubser's web page at Princeton

"Drag force in AdS/CFT"
''Phys. Rev. D'' 74:126005,2006 {{DEFAULTSORT:Gubser, Steven 1972 births 2019 deaths 21st-century American physicists California Institute of Technology faculty Mountaineering deaths Princeton University alumni Princeton University faculty Simons Investigator Sport deaths in France American string theorists