David Tong is a British theoretical physicist. He is a professor 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 ...

, working in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). He is also a fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

. His research mainly concerns

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines Field theory (physics), field theory and the principle of relativity with ideas behind quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct phy ...

. He is the joint recipient of the 2008 Adams Prize and is currently a Simons Investigator. He is also known for his outreach activities and for his freely available lecture notes covering a wide range of topics in physics.

Research and career

Tong grew up in Crawley, UK. He attended Hazelwick School before undertaking his undergraduate studies in Mathematical Physics at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

. He completed his MSc in Mathematics at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

, and his PhD in Theoretical Physics at Swansea University. He held research positions at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, at

and at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. Between 2001 and 2004 he was a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT Center for Theoretical Physics. He joined the faculty at Cambridge in 2004. Tong works on quantum field theory and its application to different areas of physics. His early work was on

solitons In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a nonlinear, self-reinforcing, localized wave packet that is , in that it preserves its shape while propagating freely, at constant velocity, and recovers it even after collisions with other such locali ...

and includes the discovery (with Amihay Hanany) of a vortex solution in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. With Eva Silverstein and Mohsen Alishahia, he proposed a new, predictive mechanism for cosmic inflation based on the Dirac–Born–Infeld (DBI) action which helped motivate more systematic analyses of primordial non-Gaussianity. In work with Andreas Karch, he uncovered a web of dualities in 3d gauge theories. Tong is known for his widely watched videos on theoretical physics, including a Royal Institution lecture on quantum field theory, and a '' Quanta Magazine'' primer on the

Standard Model The Standard Model of particle physics is the Scientific theory, theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions – excluding gravity) in the unive ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tong, David Living people Alumni of King's College London British physicists Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Year of birth missing (living people) Cambridge mathematicians MIT Center for Theoretical Physics people Simons Investigator