Brian Greene
(born February 9, 1963) is an American theoretical physicist and one of the best-known string theorists. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. He has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe
, Icarus at the Edge of Time
and The Fabric of the Cosmos,
and a related PBS television special.
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DR. BRIAN GREENE TICKETS
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Biography
Greene was born in
New York City. His father, Alan Greene, was a one-time
vaudeville performer and high school dropout who later worked as a voice coach and composer.
[1] After attending
Stuyvesant High School,
[2] Greene entered
Harvard in 1980 to major in physics and, having completed his bachelor's degree, went on to earn his doctorate from
Oxford University in
England as a
Rhodes Scholar, graduating in 1987.
Greene joined the physics faculty of
Cornell University in 1990, and was appointed to a full professorship in 1995. The following year, he joined the staff of
Columbia University as a full professor; this remains his current position. At Columbia, Greene is co-director of the University's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP), and is leading a research program applying superstring theory to cosmological questions. He is also one of the
FQXi large grant awardees, his project title being "Arrow of Time in the Quantum Universe". His co-investigators are
David Albert and
Maulik Parikh.
Greene is married to former
ABC producer Tracy Day.
[3]
Work
Research
Greene's area of research is
string theory, a candidate for a theory of
quantum gravity, which attempts to explain the different particle species of the
standard model of particle physics as different aspects of a single type of one-dimensional, vibrating string. One peculiarity of string theory is that it postulates the existence of extra
dimensions of
space – instead of the usual three dimensions of space, there must be nine or even ten spatial dimensions to allow for a consistently defined string theory. The theory has several explanations to offer for why we do not perceive these extra dimensions, one being that they are "curled up" (
compactified, to use the technical term) and are hence too small to be readily noticeable.
In the field, Greene is best known for his contribution to the understanding of the different shapes the curled-up dimensions of string theory take on. The most important of these shapes are so-called
Calabi-Yau manifolds; when the extra dimensions take on those particular form, physics in three dimensions exhibits an abstract symmetry known as
supersymmetry.
Greene has worked on a particular class of symmetry relating two different
Calabi-Yau manifolds, known as
mirror symmetry (concretely, relating the
conifold to one of its
orbifolds). He is also known for his research on the flop transition, a mild form of
topology change, showing that
topology in
string theory can change at the
conifold point.
Currently, Greene studies
string cosmology, especially the imprints of trans
Planckian physics on the
cosmic microwave background, and
brane-gas cosmologies that could explain why the space around us has
three large dimensions, expanding on the suggestion of a
black hole electron, namely that the
electron may be a
black hole.
Communicating science
Greene is well known to a wider audience for his work on popularizing theoretical physics, in particular string theory and the search for a
unified theory of physics. His first book,
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
, published in 1999, is a popularization of
superstring theory and
M-theory. It was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, and winner of
The Aventis Prizes for Science Books
in 2000.
[4] The Elegant Universe
was later made into a
PBS television special of the same name, hosted and narrated by Greene, which won a 2003
Peabody Award.
Greene's second book,
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space. Time. And the Texture of Reality
(2004), is about
space,
time, and the nature of the
universe. Aspects covered in this book include
non-local particle entanglement as it relates to
special relativity and basic explanations of string theory. It is an examination of the very nature of
matter and
reality, covering such topics as
spacetime and
cosmology, origins and
unification, and including an exploration into reality and the
imagination.
A book for a younger audience,
Icarus at the Edge of Time
, which is a futuristic re-telling of the
Icarus myth, is scheduled for publication in September 2008.
[5] In addition to authoring popular-science books, Greene is an occasional Op-Ed Contributor for the
New York Times, writing on his work and other scientific topics.
The popularity of his books and his natural on-camera demeanor has resulted in many media appearances, including
Charlie Rose
,
The Colbert Report
,
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
,
The Century with Peter Jennings
,
CNN,
TIME
,
Nightline in Primetime
,
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
, and
The Late Show with David Letterman
. It has also led to Greene helping
John Lithgow with scientific dialogue for the
television series
3rd Rock from the Sun
, and becoming a technical consultant for the film
Frequency
, in which he also had a cameo role. Recently, he was a consultant in the
time-travel movie
Déjà Vu.
He also had a cameo appearance as an
Intel scientist in 2007's
The Last Mimzy
. Greene was also mentioned in the 2002
Angel
episode "
Supersymmetry" and in the 2008
Stargate Atlantis episode "
Trio". Through his film credits, combined with his research publications in mathematical physics, Greene is one of the few people to have a defined
Erdos–Bacon number.
Greene often lectures outside of the collegiate setting, at both a general and a technical level, in more than twenty-five countries. One of his latest projects is to organize an annual
science festival held in
New York City, the
World Science Festival. The first such festival took place in May/June 2008.
Bibliography
Technical articles
For a full list of technical articles, consult the in the
SPIRES database
- R. Easther, B. R. Greene, M. G. Jackson and D. Kabat, "''. JCAP {0502}, 009 (2005).
- R. Easther, B. Greene, W. Kinney, G. Shiu, "". Phys. Rev. D66 (2002). 023518.
- R. Easther, B. Greene, W. Kinney, G. Shiu, "". Phys. Rev. D64 (2001) 103502.
- Brian R. Greene, "". Nucl. Phys. B525 (1998) 284-296.
- Michael R. Douglas, Brian R. Greene, David R. Morrison, "". Nucl.Phys. B506 (1997) 84-106.
- Brian R. Greene, David R. Morrison, Andrew Strominger, "". Nucl.Phys. B451 (1995) 109-120.
- P.S. Aspinwall, B.R. Greene, D.R. Morrison, "". Nucl.Phys. B416 (1994) 414-480.
- B.R.Greene and M.R.Plesser, "Duality in Calabi-Yau Moduli Space". Nucl. Phys. B338 (1990) 15.
Books for general readers
- 1999. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
.
- 2005. The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
.
- 2008. Icarus at the Edge of Time
.
See also
- List of physicists
- List of theoretical physicists
- String Theory
- Theory of everything
- Unified Field Theory
References
- Biography for Brian Greene
- The String is The Thing - Brian Greene Unravels the Fabric of the Universe
- An Overflowing Five-Day Banquet of Science and Its Meanings
- Profile of Brian Greene
- A. A. Knopf Online catalogue
- New York, Cambridge To Host Citywide Science Festivals