Santa Barbara, Calif.--Joseph G. Polchinski, professor of physics at at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was cited as one of the "leading field and string theorists of his generation, contributing many significant ideas to both quantum field theory and to string theory." Polchinski's discovery of D-branes and their properties is, according to the Academy citation, "one of the most important insights in 30 years of work on string theory." String theory affords the best approach to date to a grand theory that encompasses gravity and the other three forces described by the Standard Model of particle physics (the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces). Strings and branes are the essential structures in string theory.
Instead of being only one-dimensional like strings, branes can have any dimensionality, including one. One-dimensional branes are called "D1 branes or D strings." So there are essentially two types of strings--the heterotic string or "F" (for "fundamental") string, which physicists knew about prior to Polchinski's 1995 discovery, and the "D string," or one-dimensional brane.
Polchinsk is the author of a two-volume text on string theory, which is already a classic in the field.
David Gross, KITP director, said, "Joe Polchinski's many important contributions to particle theory are characterized by great elegance, clarity and impact. He has an amazing ability to focus on what is essential. He has had many of the most fruitful ideas about gauge theories, string theories, and the relations between them. He is one of the most important theoretical physicists of his generation."
A native New Yorker, Polchinski received in BA degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1975 and his PhD from Berkeley in 1980. After two two-year stints as a research associate first at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) and then at Harvard, Polchinski joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor in 1984. He advanced to associate professor there in 1987 and to professor in 1990. He accepted his professorial appointment at Santa Barbara in 1992.
Recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship from 1985 to 1989, Polchinski was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.
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