Ruth Ann Watson Gregory is a British mathematician and

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 cau ...

, currently Head of Department of Physics and Professor of Theoretical Physics 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 ...

.News Centre
King's College London, University of London. Retrieved 03 February 2021. Her fields of specialisation are

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

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

.Ruth Gregory
TED^xCLE. Retrieved 2016-02-28.

Education

Gregory earned her PhD from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1988, writing a thesis on " topological defects in cosmology" supervised by John M. Stewart.

Career

Gregory held postdoctoral appointments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Fermi Institute in the University of Chicago, before returning to Cambridge for a five-year research fellowship. She was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Durham in 2005. Gregory held this post until her appointment as Head of Department of Physics and Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London in 2021. She is a visiting fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics where she lectures as part of the PSI's master's programme. She serves as a managing editor of International Journal of Modern Physics D.

Research

Her research centres on the intersection of fundamental high energy physics and

. She is best known for the

Gregory–Laflamme instability The Gregory–Laflamme instability (after Ruth Gregory and Raymond Laflamme) is a result in theoretical physics which states that certain black strings and branes are unstable in dimensions higher than four. In their seminal papers in 1993 and ...

, describing an instability of black strings in higher dimensions.Ruth Gregory
Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology. Retrieved 28 February 2016.

Awards and honours

Gregory was given the 2006 Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics ''for her contributions to physics at the interface of general relativity and string theory, in particular for her work on the physics of cosmic strings and black holes''. In 2011 she received the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award to study ''Time and Extra Dimensions in Space''.Royal Society announces latest round of prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards
The Royal Society. Retrieved 28 February 2016.

Selected publications

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References

External links

Professor Ruth Gregory – profile at The Royal Society website.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gregory, Ruth Living people British physicists Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of Durham University 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians 21st-century British women mathematicians Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders 20th-century British women mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people)