Claus Kalevi Montonen (born 1946) is a Finnish

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experi ...

, most known for his work with British physicist

David Olive David Ian Olive ( ; 16 April 1937 – 7 November 2012) was a British theoretical physicist. Olive made fundamental contributions to string theory and duality theory, he is particularly known for his work on the GSO projection and Montonen–O ...

in proposing the

Montonen–Olive duality Montonen–Olive duality or electric–magnetic duality is the oldest known example of strong–weak duality or S-duality according to current terminology. It generalizes the electro-magnetic symmetry of Maxwell's equations by stating that magn ...

Life

Claus Montonen received his MSc from the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

in 1968 and his PhD at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in 1974, where he was taught by David Olive before he left for CERN. He held research fellowships at

Orsay Orsay () is a Communes of France, commune in the Essonne Departments of France, department in Île-de-France in northern France. It is located in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. A fortifie ...

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

and

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. From 1974 he has held various research and teaching positions at the

and

Helsinki Institute of Physics The Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP, , ) is a physics research institute operated jointly by University of Helsinki, Aalto University, University of Jyväskylä, Lappeenranta University of Technology and Tampere University of Technology. The ope ...

Publications

In 1977 while at CERN Montonen, together with Olive, made the remarkable conjecture that there should exist an electromagnetic dual theory in which the roles of

magnetic monopoles In particle physics, a magnetic monopole is a hypothetical particle that is an isolated magnet with only one magnetic pole (a north pole without a south pole or vice versa). A magnetic monopole would have a net north or south "magnetic charge". ...

and

gauge bosons In particle physics, a gauge boson is a bosonic elementary particle that acts as the force carrier for elementary fermions. Elementary particles whose interactions are described by a gauge theory interact with each other by the exchange of gauge b ...

are interchanged. The Montonen-Olive duality was later found to emerge from a deeper web of dualities underlying

M-theory In physics, M-theory is a theory that unifies all Consistency, consistent versions of superstring theory. Edward Witten first conjectured the existence of such a theory at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in 1 ...

, ushering in the

second superstring revolution The history of string theory spans several decades of intense research including two superstring revolutions. Through the combined efforts of many researchers, string theory has developed into a broad and varied subject with connections to quantum ...

of the mid 1990s, through the work of Ed Witten and others.

References

Citations

Bibliography

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External links

Claus Montonen, University of Helsinki
{{DEFAULTSORT:Montonen, Claus 1942 births 20th-century Finnish physicists Theoretical physicists People associated with CERN Academic staff of the University of Helsinki String theorists Alumni of the University of Cambridge Living people