Michael Dine (born 12 August 1953,

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

) is an American theoretical physicist, specializing in elementary particle physics,

supersymmetry In a supersymmetric theory the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical. In theoretical and mathematical physics, any theory with this property has the principle of supersymmetry (SUSY). Dozens of supersymmetric theories e ...

string theory In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...

, and physics beyond the Standard Model.

Education and career

Dine received in 1974 a bachelor's degree from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

and in 1978 a Ph.D. under

Thomas Appelquist Thomas William Appelquist is a theoretical particle physicist who is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale University. He received his bachelor's degree from Illinois Benedictine College and his Ph.D. in 1968 from Cornell University ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

with thesis ''Interactions of Heavy Quarks in Quantum Chromodynamics''. He did research at

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departm ...

and was for a number of years at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

and the ''Henry Semat'' Professor at

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

. He is currently a professor at

Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics The Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) is an organized research unit within the University of California system focused on theoretical and experimental high-energy physics and astrophysics. Research SCIPP's scientific and technic ...

(SCIPP) of the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

. Dine was a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

for the academic year 2006–2007 and

Sloan Fellow The Sloan Fellows program is the world's first mid-career and senior career master's degree in general management and leadership. It was initially supported by a grant from Alfred P. Sloan, the late CEO of General Motors, to his alma mater, MI ...

in 1986. He is a fellow of

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

and in 2010 he was elected a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. He is a recipient of the 2018

Sakurai Prize The J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, is presented by the American Physical Society at its annual April Meeting, and honors outstanding achievement in particle physics theory. The prize consists of a monetary award ($10,000 U ...

. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in April 2019.

Research

Dine works on the "phenomenology" (''i.e.'' experimentally testable models for low energy) of supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model and of superstring theory. In particular, he does research on

supersymmetry breaking In particle physics, supersymmetry breaking is the process to obtain a seemingly non-supersymmetric physics from a supersymmetric theory which is a necessary step to reconcile supersymmetry with actual experiments. It is an example of spontaneous s ...

. Dine investigated in the 1980s modifications of

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

with dynamical supersymmetry breaking (DSB), partly with

Ian Affleck Ian Keith Affleck is a Canadian physicist specializing in condensed matter physics. He is (in 2013) Killam University Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia. Work Ian Affleck currently studies theoretical ...

and

Nathan Seiberg Nathan "Nati" Seiberg (; born September 22, 1956) is an Israeli American theoretical physicist who works on quantum field theory and string theory. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United ...

. With

Willy Fischler Willy Fischler (born 1949 in Antwerp, Belgium) is a theoretical physicist. He is 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. He is al ...

and Mark Srednicki, Dine published in 1981 a theory of supersymmetric

technicolor Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...

, using gauge bosons and their superpartners, that provided a model of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. Dine with Affleck and Seiberg developed a general theory of dynamical supersymmetry breaking in four-dimensional spacetime and with

Ann Nelson Ann Elizabeth Nelson (April 29, 1958 – August 4, 2019) was a particle physicist and professor of physics in the Particle Theory Group at the University of Washington from 1994 until her death. Nelson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 200 ...

, Yuri Shirman, and Yosef Nir developed new models of gauge-mediated dynamical supersymmetry breaking. With Fischler and Srednicki he developed an "Invisible

Axion An axion () is a hypothetical elementary particle postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interes ...

" Model known as the DFSZ (Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnisky) model. Later Dine with Fischler also elaborated this theory and its cosmological implications (the axion is a candidate for a

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ab ...

particle). To explain the matter/antimatter imbalance in the universe, Dine and Ian Affeck proposed the Affleck–Dine mechanism. The Affleck-Dine mechanism might provide a candidate for a dark matter particle, namely a particular type of

Q-ball In theoretical physics, Q-ball is a type of non-topological soliton. A soliton is a localized field configuration that is stable—it cannot spread out and dissipate. In the case of a non-topological soliton, the stability is guaranteed by a cons ...

. Dine investigated with

Ryan Rohm Ryan Milton Rohm (born 22 December 1957, Gastonia, North Carolina) is an American string theorist. He is one of four physicists known as the Princeton string quartet, and is responsible for the development of heterotic string theory along with Davi ...

, Nathan Seiberg and Edward Witten gluino condensation in string theory, with Witten and Seiberg the implications of Fayet-Iliopoulos D-terms for vacuum destabilization, and with X. G. Wen, Seiberg and Witten the non-perturbative effects (instantons) on the

worldsheet In string theory, a worldsheet is a two-dimensional manifold which describes the embedding of a string in spacetime. The term was coined by Leonard Susskind as a direct generalization of the world line concept for a point particle in special and ...

of strings. He has done extensive research on applications of superstring theory to cosmology.

Selected publications

as author: * as editor: * * with

Thomas Banks Thomas Banks (29 December 1735 – 2 February 1805) was an important 18th-century English sculptor. Life The son of William Banks, a Surveyor (surveying), surveyor who was land steward to the Duke of Beaufort, he was born in London. He was e ...

Subir Sachdev Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society ...

References

External links

Oral history interview transcript with Michael Dine on 14 April 2021, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & ArchivesMichael Dine's homepage, scipp.ucsc.edu
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dine, Michael 1953 births Living people People from Cincinnati Johns Hopkins University alumni Yale University alumni City College of New York faculty University of California, Santa Cruz faculty Sloan Research Fellows Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American string theorists J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics recipients