Gary William Gibbons (born 1 July 1946) is a British

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 ...

Education

Gibbons was born in

Coulsdon Coulsdon (, traditionally pronounced ) is a town in south London, England, within the London Borough of Croydon. Coulsdon was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey that included the settlements of Purley and Kenley. It was merged with Sand ...

, Surrey. He was educated at Purley County Grammar School and 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 ...

, where in 1969 he became a research student under the supervision of

Dennis Sciama Dennis William Siahou Sciama, (; 18 November 1926 – 18 December 1999) was an English physicist who, through his own work and that of his students, played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War. He was the PhD ...

. When Sciama moved to the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, he became a student of

Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...

, obtaining his PhD from Cambridge in 1973.

Career and research

Apart from a stay at the

Max Planck Institute The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

in Munich in the 1970s he has remained in Cambridge throughout his career, becoming a full professor in 1997, a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1999, and 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 ...

in 2002. Having worked on classical general relativity for his PhD thesis, Gibbons focused on the quantum theory of black holes afterwards. Together with Malcolm Perry, he used thermal

Green's function In mathematics, a Green's function (or Green function) is the impulse response of an inhomogeneous linear differential operator defined on a domain with specified initial conditions or boundary conditions. This means that if L is a linear dif ...

s to prove the universality of thermodynamic properties of horizons, including cosmological event horizons. He developed the Euclidean approach to quantum gravity with

, which allows a derivation of the thermodynamics of black holes from a functional integral approach. As the

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

ean action for gravity is not positive definite, the integral only converges when a particular contour is used for conformal factors. His work in more recent years includes contributions to research on

supergravity In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity; this is in contrast to non-gravitational supersymmetric theories such as ...

, p-branes and

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 ...

, mainly motivated by

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 intera ...

. Gibbons remains interested in geometrical problems of all sorts which have applications to physics.

Awards and honours

Gibbons was elected a

(FRS) in 1999. His nomination reads

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibbons, Gary Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge British theoretical physicists English physicists Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Living people Cambridge mathematicians British string theorists 1946 births