Leonard Susskind

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Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox scientist Leonard Susskind (Template:IPAc-en; born June 16, 1940)<ref name=lennyfest>Template:Cite webhis 60th birth anniversary was celebrated with a special symposium at Stanford University.</ref><ref name=santafe>Template:Cite webin Geoffrey West's introduction, he gives Suskind's current age as 74 and says his birthday was recent.</ref> is an American theoretical physicist, professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests are string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.<ref name=StanfordFaculty>Template:Cite journal</ref> He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,<ref name=bioAtEdge/> an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of the holographic principle in 1995<ref name=SusskindArXiv>Template:Cite journal</ref> and the first to introduce the idea of the string theory landscape in 2003.<ref name="arXiv-0302219">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="SciAm-2011">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Susskind was awarded the 1998 J. J. Sakurai Prize,<ref name=Sakurai/> the 2018 Oskar Klein Medal,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 2023.

Early life and education

Leonard Susskind was born to a Jewish family from the South Bronx in New York City.<ref name=LATimes2008>Template:Cite news</ref> He began working as a plumber at the age of 16, taking over from his father who had become ill.<ref name=LATimes2008/> Later, he enrolled in the City College of New York as an engineering student and had planned to study mechanical engineering but he changed his mind and later graduated with a B.S. in physics in 1962.<ref name=bioAtEdge /> In an interview in the Los Angeles Times, Susskind recalls a discussion with his father that changed his career path: "When I told my father I wanted to be a physicist, he said, 'Hell no, you ain't going to work in a drug store.' I said, 'No, not a pharmacist.' I said, 'Like Einstein.' He poked me in the chest with a piece of plumbing pipe. 'You ain't going to be no engineer,' he said. 'You're going to be Einstein.Template:'"<ref name=LATimes2008/> Susskind then studied at Cornell University under Peter A. Carruthers, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1965.

Career

Susskind giving 2014 Messenger Lecture at Cornell

Susskind was an assistant professor of physics, then an associate professor at Yeshiva University (1966–1970), after which he went for a year to the Tel Aviv University (1971–72), returning to Yeshiva to become a professor of physics (1970–1979). Since 1979 he has been professor of physics at Stanford University,<ref name=StanfordFaculty/> and since 2000 has held the Felix Bloch professorship of physics.

Susskind was awarded the 1998 J. J. Sakurai Prize for his "pioneering contributions to hadronic string models, lattice gauge theories, quantum chromodynamics, and dynamical symmetry breaking." Susskind's hallmark, according to colleagues, has been the application of "brilliant imagination and originality to the theoretical study of the nature of the elementary particles and forces that make up the physical world."<ref name=Sakurai>Template:Cite press release</ref>

In 2007, Susskind joined the faculty of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, as an associate member. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a distinguished professor at Korea Institute for Advanced Study.<ref>Welcome To Kias Template:Webarchive</ref>

Scientific career

Susskind was one of at least three physicists, alongside Yoichiro Nambu and Holger Bech Nielsen, who independently discovered during or around 1970 that Gabriele Veneziano's dual resonance model of strong interactions could be described by a quantum mechanical model of oscillating strings,<ref>Template:Cite arXiv</ref> and was the first to propose the idea of the string theory landscape. Susskind has also made important contributions in the following areas of physics:

Books

Susskind is the author of several popular science books.

The Cosmic Landscape

Template:Main The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design is Susskind's first popular science book, published by Little, Brown and Company on December 12, 2005.<ref name="CosmicLandscapeBook">Template:Cite book [2]</ref> It is Susskind's attempt to bring his idea of the anthropic landscape of string theory to the general public. In the book, Susskind describes how the string theory landscape was an almost inevitable consequence of several factors, one of which was Steven Weinberg's prediction of the cosmological constant in 1987. The question addressed here is why our universe is fine-tuned for our existence. Susskind explains that Weinberg calculated that if the cosmological constant was just a little different, our universe would cease to exist.

The Black Hole War

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The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics is Susskind's second popular science book, published by Little, Brown, and Company on July 7, 2008.<ref name="BlackHoleWarBook">Template:Cite book [3]</ref> The book is his most famous work and explains what he thinks would happen to the information and matter stored in a black hole when it evaporates. The book sparked from a debate that started in 1981, when there was a meeting of physicists to try to decode some of the mysteries about how particles of particular elemental compounds function. During this discussion Stephen Hawking stated that the information inside a black hole is lost forever as the black hole evaporates. It took 28 years for Leonard Susskind to formulate his theory that would prove Hawking wrong. He then published his theory in his book, The Black Hole War. Like The Cosmic Landscape, The Black Hole War is aimed at the lay reader. He writes: "The real tools for understanding the quantum universe are abstract mathematics: infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces, projection operators, unitary matrices and a lot of other advanced principles that take a few years to learn. But let's see how we do in just a few pages".

The Theoretical Minimum book series

Template:Main Susskind co-authored a series of companion books to his lecture series The Theoretical Minimum. The first of these, The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics,<ref name=TTMClassicalMechanicsBook>Template:Cite book</ref> was published in 2013 and presents the modern formulations of classical mechanics. The second of these, Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum,<ref name=TTMQuantumMechanicsBook>Template:Cite book</ref> was published in February 2014. The third book, Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: The Theoretical Minimum (September 26, 2017),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> introduces readers to Einstein's special relativity and Maxwell's classical field theory. The fourth book in the series, General Relativity: The Theoretical Minimum was published in January 2023.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The Theoretical Minimum lecture series

Susskind teaches a series of Stanford Continuing Studies courses about modern physics referred to as The Theoretical Minimum. The title of the series is a clear reference to Landau's famous comprehensive exam called the "Theoretical Minimum" which students were expected to pass before admission to his school. The Theoretical Minimum lectures later formed the basis for the books of the same name.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The goal of the courses is to teach the basic but rigorous theoretical foundations required to study certain areas of physics. The sequence covers classical mechanics, relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology, including the physics of black holes.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

These courses are available on The Theoretical Minimum website, on iTunes, and on YouTube. The courses are intended for the mathematically literate<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> public as well as physical science/mathematics students. Susskind aims the courses at people with prior exposure to algebra, and calculus.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Homework and study outside of class is otherwise unnecessary. Susskind explains most of the mathematics used, which form the basis of the lectures.

Cornell Messenger Lectures

Susskind gave 3 lectures "The Birth of the Universe and the Origin of Laws of Physics" April 28-May 1, 2014 in the Cornell Messenger Lecture series which are posted on a Cornell website.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Smolin–Susskind debate

The Smolin–Susskind debate refers to the series of intense postings in 2004 between Lee Smolin and Susskind, concerning Smolin's argument that the "anthropic principle cannot yield any falsifiable predictions, and therefore cannot be a part of science".<ref name=EdgeSmolinSusskind>Template:Cite web</ref> It began on July 26, 2004, with Smolin's publication of "scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle".Template:Citation needed Smolin e-mailed Susskind asking for a comment. Having not had the chance to read the paper, Susskind requested a summarization of his arguments.

Smolin obliged, and on July 28, 2004, Susskind responded, saying that the logic Smolin followed "can lead to ridiculous conclusions".<ref name=EdgeSmolinSusskind/> The next day, Smolin responded, saying that "If a large body of our colleagues feels comfortable believing a theory that cannot be proved wrong, then the progress of science could get stuck, leading to a situation in which false, but unfalsifiable theories dominate the attention of our field." This was followed by another paper by Susskind which made a few comments about Smolin's theory of "cosmic natural selection".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The Smolin–Susskind debate finally ended with each of them agreeing to write a final letter which would be posted on the edge.org website, with three conditions attached:

(1) No more than one letter each.
(2) Neither sees the other's letter in advance.
(3) No changes after the fact.

Personal life

He has been married twice, first in 1960,<ref name=bioAtEdge>www.edge.org • Leonard Susskind - A Biography (last accessed August 12, 2007).</ref> and he has four children. Susskind is a great-grandfather.<ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Chown, Marcus, "Our world may be a giant hologram", New Scientist, 15 January 2009, issue 2691: "The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prize winner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface."

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