Malcolm John Perry (born 13 November 1951) 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 experim ...

and

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

professor of theoretical physics at

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and professor of theoretical physics at

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and previously Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of ...

. His research mainly concerns

quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics; it deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...

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 ...

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. ...

, and

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 ...

Biography

Perry attended

King Edward's School, Birmingham King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birm ...

before reading physics at

St John's College, Oxford St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded as a men's college in 1555, it has been coeducational since 1979.Communication from Michael Riordan, college archivist Its founder, Sir Thomas White, intended to pr ...

. He was a graduate student at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, under the supervision of Stephen Hawking. He obtained his doctorate in 1978 with a thesis on the quantum mechanics of black holes. In these early years, he worked on several very influential papers on

Euclidean quantum gravity In theoretical physics, Euclidean quantum gravity is a version of quantum gravity. It seeks to use the Wick rotation to describe the force of gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. Introduction in layperson's terms The Wick ...

and

black hole radiation Hawking radiation is theoretical black body radiation that is theorized to be released outside a black hole's event horizon because of relativistic quantum effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who developed a theoretical arg ...

with

Gary Gibbons Gary William Gibbons (born 1 July 1946) is a British theoretical physicist. Education Gibbons was born in Coulsdon, Surrey. He was educated at Purley County Grammar School and the University of Cambridge, where in 1969 he became a researc ...

and Hawking. After his graduate studies, he worked in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

from 1978 to 1986. With his student Rob Myers, he found the Myers-Perry metric, which describes the higher-dimensional generalization of the

Kerr metric The Kerr metric or Kerr geometry describes the geometry of empty spacetime around a rotating uncharged axially symmetric black hole with a quasispherical event horizon. The Kerr metric is an exact solution of the Einstein field equations of ...

. He also started working on

, string theory and Kaluza–Klein theory. In his final years in Princeton he worked with

Curtis Callan Curtis Gove Callan Jr. (born October 11, 1942) is an American theoretical physicist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He has conducted research in gauge theory, string theory, instan ...

Emil Martinec Emil John Martinec (born 1958) is an American string theorist, a physics professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, and director of the Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics. He was part of a group at Princeton Univer ...

and

Daniel Friedan Daniel Harry Friedan (born October 3, 1948) is an American theoretical physicist and one of three children of the feminist author and activist Betty Friedan. He is a professor at Rutgers University. Biography Education and career Friedan earned h ...

to calculate the low-energy effective action for string theory. In 1986, he returned to

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, being elected a fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a 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 college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, where he has worked ever since. In 2010, his attention has focused on generalised geometry and the doubled formalism for string theory, extending these ideas to M-theory in collaboration with David Berman. In 2016, he returned to black hole physics with Hawking and

Andrew Strominger Andrew Eben Strominger (; born 1955) is an American theoretical physicist who is the director of Harvard's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. He has made significant contributions to quantum gravity and string theory. These include his ...

and began a series of highly influential works attempting to solve long standing problems in black hole thermodynamics.

References

External links

Malcolm Perry's faculty page at Queen Mary University of London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perry, Malcolm 1951 births Living people English physicists Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Cambridge mathematicians