American theoretical physicist
John Henry Schwarz (; born November 22, 1941) is an American
theoretical physicist .
[4] Along with
Yoichiro Nambu ,
Holger Bech Nielsen ,
Joël Scherk ,
Gabriele Veneziano ,
Michael Green , and
Leonard Susskind , he is regarded as one of the founders of
string theory .
Early life and education
He studied mathematics at
Harvard College (
A.B. , 1962) and theoretical physics at the
University of California at Berkeley (
Ph.D. , 1966), where his graduate advisor was
Geoffrey Chew .
For several years he was one of the very few physicists who pursued
string theory as a viable theory of
quantum gravity .
His work with
Michael Green on
anomaly cancellation in Type I string theories led to the so-called "
first superstring revolution " of 1984, which greatly contributed to moving string theory into the mainstream of research in theoretical physics.
[5]
Schwarz was an
assistant professor at
Princeton University from 1966 to 1972. He then moved to the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he is currently the
Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics.
[6]
Awards
He was elected a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and a
Fellow of the American Physical Society (1986).
[7] He was a fellow of the
MacArthur Foundation in 1987.
He received the
Dirac Medal of the
International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 1989, and the
Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics of the
American Physical Society in 2002. On December 12, 2013, he shared the
Fundamental Physics Prize with Michael Green "for opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces."
Political activism
On November 1, 2012, Schwarz published an article in the
Huffington Post expressing his concern that research into
medical marijuana is being blocked by President
Barack Obama 's administration despite its professed commitment to "free and open scientific inquiry." Schwarz compares the ideologically driven prohibition of scientific study in this area to the
Catholic Church's imprisonment of
Galileo for his heretical conclusions about the
Solar System
Last year, Dr.
Susan Sisley at the
University of Arizona at
Phoenix attempted to conduct clinical trials of marijuana treatments for American veterans suffering from extreme
post-traumatic stress disorder . She won
FDA approval for a placebo-controlled pilot study on 50 veterans. Winning FDA approval would be sufficient for research on any other drug. With marijuana, however, scientists must also apply to the
National Institute on Drug Abuse in order to purchase the only legal supply of marijuana. NIDA turned down Dr. Sisley's request. As their director explained, NIDA's mission is to support research into the harms, not the benefits, of marijuana. Essentially, NIDA's mission is to block any research that could undermine the
Schedule I status of marijuana as a dangerous narcotic, as insisted by the
DEA . ... The acceptance of science has come a long way since Galileo was arrested as a heretic for questioning the order of the Universe. Yet today, the federal government ignores scientific facts accepted around the globe—not to mention the will of the American people—to cling to outdated ideological policies and restrict marijuana research.
[8]
Selected publications
Green, M., John H. Schwarz, and
E. Witten . Superstring Theory. Vol. 1, Introduction. Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
ISBN
9780521357524 .
Superstring Theory. Vol. 2, Loop Amplitutes, Anomalies and Phenomenology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
ISBN
9780521357531 .
Becker, Katrin ,
Melanie Becker , and John H. Schwarz.
String theory and M-theory: A modern introduction . Cambridge University Press, 2006.
ISBN
978-0-521-86069-7 .
References
^ Green, M. B.; Schwarz, J. H. (1984). "Covariant description of superstrings". Physics Letters B . 136 (5–6): 367.
Bibcode :
1984PhLB..136..367G .
doi :
10.1016/0370-2693(84)92021-5 .
^ Green, M. B., Schwarz, J. H. (1982). "Supersymmetrical string theories." Physics Letters B , 109 , 444–448.
^ Schwarz, J. H. (1972). "Physical states and pomeron poles in the dual pion model." Nuclear Physics , B46 (1), 61–74.
^
"Archived copy" (PDF) . Archived from
the original (PDF) on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-04-03 . {{
cite web }}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
link )
^
"superstringtheory.com" . Archived from
the original on 2016-09-09. Retrieved 2010-12-31 .
^
Faculty website
^
"APS Fellow Archive" . ARS. Retrieved 23 September 2020 .
^
"Obama, What About 'Free and Open Scientific Inquiry' for Medical Marijuana?" 'The Huffington Post', November 1, 2012
External links
Schwarz, John H. (March 11, 2016).
"Unifying GR with Quantum Theory" (PDF) . Burke Institute, Caltech .
"Interview with John H. Schwarz by Sara Lippincott. Pasadena, California, July 21 and 26, 2000" . Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives .
Oral history interview transcript with John Schwarz on 7 July 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
"Some Basic Superstring Theory, John Schwarz | Lecture 1 of 2" . YouTube . aoflex. December 24, 2013. (July 14. 2008 lecture)
"PiTP-Some Basic Superstring Theory, Part 2 - John Schwarz" . YouTube . July 11, 2017. (July 15, 2008 lecture)
"Day 3, Theoretical Physics Session, John Schwarz" . YouTube . Int'l Centre for Theoretical Physics. October 15, 2014.
"John Schwarz - Lecture: String Theory #NFLS" . YouTube . Nobel Fest. April 15, 2021.
"John Schwarz - String Theory: Past, Present, and Future" . YouTube . Simons Center for Geometry and Physics. December 14, 2021.
Mathematics
Fundamental physics
Nima Arkani-Hamed ,
Alan Guth ,
Alexei Kitaev ,
Maxim Kontsevich ,
Andrei Linde ,
Juan Maldacena ,
Nathan Seiberg ,
Ashoke Sen ,
Edward Witten (2012)
Special :
Stephen Hawking ,
Peter Jenni ,
Fabiola Gianotti (ATLAS),
Michel Della Negra ,
Tejinder Virdee ,
Guido Tonelli ,
Joseph Incandela (CMS) and
Lyn Evans (LHC) (2013)
Alexander Polyakov (2013)
Michael Green and
John Henry Schwarz (2014)
Saul Perlmutter and members of the
Supernova Cosmology Project ;
Brian Schmidt ,
Adam Riess and members of the
High-Z Supernova Team (2015)
Special :
Ronald Drever ,
Kip Thorne ,
Rainer Weiss and contributors to
LIGO project (2016)
Yifang Wang ,
Kam-Biu Luk and the
Daya Bay team ,
Atsuto Suzuki and the
KamLAND team,
Kōichirō Nishikawa and the
K2K /
T2K team,
Arthur B. McDonald and the
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory team,
Takaaki Kajita and
Yōichirō Suzuki and the
Super-Kamiokande team (2016)
Joseph Polchinski ,
Andrew Strominger ,
Cumrun Vafa (2017)
Charles L. Bennett ,
Gary Hinshaw ,
Norman Jarosik ,
Lyman Page Jr. ,
David Spergel (2018)
Special :
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (2018)
Charles Kane and
Eugene Mele (2019)
Special :
Sergio Ferrara ,
Daniel Z. Freedman ,
Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (2019)
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2020)
Eric Adelberger ,
Jens H. Gundlach and
Blayne Heckel (2021)
Special :
Steven Weinberg (2021)
Hidetoshi Katori and
Jun Ye (2022)
Charles H. Bennett ,
Gilles Brassard ,
David Deutsch ,
Peter W. Shor (2023)
John Cardy and
Alexander Zamolodchikov (2024)
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Charles David Allis ,
Victor Ambros ,
Gary Ruvkun ,
Jennifer Doudna and
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Edward Boyden ,
Karl Deisseroth ,
John Hardy ,
Helen Hobbs and
Svante Pääbo (2016)
Stephen J. Elledge ,
Harry F. Noller ,
Roeland Nusse ,
Yoshinori Ohsumi ,
Huda Zoghbi (2017)
Joanne Chory ,
Peter Walter ,
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C. Frank Bennett and
Adrian R. Krainer ,
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Xiaowei Zhuang ,
Zhijian Chen (2019)
Jeffrey M. Friedman ,
Franz-Ulrich Hartl ,
Arthur L. Horwich ,
David Julius ,
Virginia Man-Yee Lee (2020)
David Baker ,
Catherine Dulac ,
Dennis Lo ,
Richard J. Youle [
de ] (2021)
Jeffery W. Kelly ,
Katalin Karikó ,
Drew Weissman ,
Shankar Balasubramanian ,
David Klenerman and
Pascal Mayer (2022)
Clifford P. Brangwynne ,
Anthony A. Hyman ,
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John Jumper ,
Emmanuel Mignot ,
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Carl June ,
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International National Academics Other