Paul Kingsley Townsend (; born 3 March 1951) is a British physicist, currently a Professor of Theoretical Physics in

Cambridge University 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 ...

's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. He is notable for his work on

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 ...

Education

He received his PhD from

Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...

in 1976 for his dissertation ''The 1/N expansion of scalar field theories'' supervised by Howard Joel Schnitzer. Since then he has over 320 publications.

Work

In 1987, , , and Paul Townsend showed that there are no superstrings in eleven dimensions (the largest number of dimensions consistent with a single graviton in

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 ...

theories), but supermembranes. In 1977 he was the first to formulate pure 4D N = 1 supergravity in

anti-de Sitter space In mathematics and physics, ''n''-dimensional anti-de Sitter space (AdS''n'') is a symmetric_space, maximally symmetric Lorentzian manifold with constant negative scalar curvature. Anti-de Sitter space and de Sitter space are na ...

Awards and honours

He was elected 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 May 2000.

References

External links

* * (lecture by Paul Townsend) * (Workshop: Octonions and the Standard Model, Perimeter Institute, 2021) * (Workshop: Octonions and the Standard Model, Perimeter Institute, 2021) 1951 births Living people Brandeis University alumni Cambridge mathematicians British string theorists Fellows of the Royal Society {{UK-physicist-stub