We can’t predict what the eventual outcomes of our research will be. But, if we are successful, they will certainly be huge.
- Michael Green
In December 2013 Professor Michael Green of Cambridge University and Professor John Schwarz of California Institute of Technology were awarded the 2014 Fundamental Physics Prize, one of a series of annual 'Breakthrough Prizes' set up to raise the profile of the physical and biological sciences. Their shared $3 mn prize was given for “opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces”.
Green and Schwarz are known for their pioneering work in string theory, postulated as a way of explaining the fundamental constituents of the universe as tiny vibrating strings. Different types of elementary particles arise in this theory as different vibrational harmonics (or ‘notes’). The scope of string theory has broadened over the past few years and is currently being applied to a far wider field than that for which it was first devised, which has taken those who research into it in unexpected directions.
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Image: Strings
Credit: Johnny Settle
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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