AEI expert for string theory appointed to Humboldt University
Potsdam-based physicist Dr Matthias Staudacher has accepted a appointment at Humboldt University in Berlin. From the start of the summer term in 2010, he has held the professorship of “Mathematical Physics of Space, Time and Matter” at the Institutes of Physics and Mathematics. This professorship was established jointly by the two institutes.
Matthias Staudacher is one of the most prominent theoretical physicists of the younger generation. He studied physics at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich (LMU) as well as at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where he wrote his doctoral thesis in 1990 on matrix models of two-dimensional quantum gravity. He has been working as a Research Ground Leader in the Quantum Gravity and Unified Theories Department at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute/AEI) in Potsdam. Even after his appointment to Humboldt University, he will remain linked to the AEI as an external staff member.
He zealously cooperates with colleagues from all over the globe on the development of a unified theory of all fundamental forces of nature. A theory that reconciles quantum theory (the world on a mini-scale) and general relativity (the world on a maxi-scale) and that is one of the most exciting tasks of modern physics. A promising candidate for such a “theory of everything” is the string theory. This is one of Matthias Staudacher’s research focus points. Most recently, he and his colleagues were able to come up with, thanks to the first-time proof of the so-called integrability in four-dimensional quantum field theories, innovative calculation methods for string theories. Moreover, after over 50 years of frustrated efforts, this provides the first example of an exact solvable four-dimensional non-trivial quantum field theory.
Matthias Staudacher was recently honoured for his outstanding scientific achievements with the Academy Prize 2009 from the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). The Academy Prize is, along with the Helmholtz Medal, the top scientific award bestowed by the BBAW.
