Luboš Motl (; born 5 December 1973) is a Czech

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

and

blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

. He was an assistant professor in

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 rel ...

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 ...

from 2004 to 2007. His scientific publications were focused on string theory.

Life and career

Motl was born in Plzeň, present-day

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...

. He won a Bronze Medal at the 1992

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except ...

. He received his master's degree from the

Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , underg ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, and his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree from

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and wa ...

(2001) and has been a Harvard Junior Fellow (2001–2004) and assistant professor (2004–2007) at

. In 2007, he left Harvard and returned to the Czech Republic. Although an undergraduate at a Czech university where none of the faculty specialized in string theory, Motl came to the attention of string theorist

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 who was land steward to the Duke of Beaufort, he was born in London. He was educated at Ross-on-Wye ...

in 1996, when Banks read an

arXiv arXiv (pronounced " archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists o ...

posting by Motl on

matrix string theory In physics, matrix string theory is a set of equations that describe superstring theory in a non-perturbative framework. Type IIA string theory can be shown to be equivalent to a maximally supersymmetric two-dimensional gauge theory, the gauge ...

. "I was at first a little annoyed by otl'spaper, because it scooped me," said Banks. "This feeling turned to awe when I realized that Lubos was still an undergraduate". He then became a graduate student of Banks, and wrote his PhD thesis on matrix theory. While at Harvard, Motl worked on the pp-wave limit of

AdS/CFT 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 ...

correspondence,

twistor theory In theoretical physics, twistor theory was proposed by Roger Penrose in 1967 as a possible path to quantum gravity and has evolved into a branch of theoretical and mathematical physics. Penrose proposed that twistor space should be the basic arena ...

and its application to

gauge theory In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian (and hence the dynamics of the system itself) does not change (is invariant) under local transformations according to certain smooth families of operations (Lie groups ...

with

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 ...

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can defo ...

thermodynamics and the conjectured relevance of quasinormal modes for

loop quantum gravity Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is a theory of quantum gravity, which aims to merge quantum mechanics and general relativity, incorporating matter of the Standard Model into the framework established for the pure quantum gravity case. It is an attem ...

, deconstruction, and other topics. In 2006, he proposed the weak gravity conjecture with

Nima Arkani-Hamed Nima Arkani-Hamed ( fa, نیما ارکانی حامد; born April 5, 1972) is an American-Canadian

, Alberto Nicolis and

Cumrun Vafa Cumrun Vafa ( fa, کامران وفا ; born 1 August 1960) is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist and the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. Early life and education Cumrun Vafa was born in Tehran ...

. He is the author of ''L'équation Bogdanov'', a 2008 French-language book discussing the scientific ideas and

controversy Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...

of the Bogdanov brothers.

The Reference Frame

Motl writes a science and politics

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

called "The Reference Frame: Supersymmetric world from a conservative viewpoint", in which he expresses his scientific and

right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, autho ...

political opinions, including invective as well as personal insults. The blog has been described by George Musser as an "over-the-top" defense of string theory, defining one of the extremes of scientific opinions on that topic, with the other extreme being represented by Peter Woit. Following the example of

Oriana Fallaci Oriana Fallaci (; 29 June 1929 – 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist and author. A partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution ...

, Motl characterizes himself as a

Christian atheist Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ (title), Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive ...

. He also describes himself as a "champion of the

consistent histories In quantum mechanics, the consistent histories (also referred to as decoherent histories) approach is intended to give a modern interpretation of quantum mechanics, generalising the conventional Copenhagen interpretation and providing a natural i ...

interpretation of

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

", and has strongly criticised Erik Verlinde's

entropic gravity Entropic gravity, also known as emergent gravity, is a theory in modern physics that describes gravity as an '' entropic force''—a force with macro-scale homogeneity but which is subject to quantum-level disorder—and not a fundamental int ...

theory. As of April 2022, Motl abolished the blog citing censorship pressures and general dissatisfaction.

References

External links

The Reference Frame
Luboš Motl's blog {{DEFAULTSORT:Motl, Lubos 1973 births Living people Czech physicists Charles University alumni Rutgers University alumni String theorists Scientists from Plzeň Czech bloggers