by
Ashoke Sen (Ph.D. Stony Brook,1983)
Harish-Chandra Research Institute
Monday, October 10, 2016
5:30 pm
Lecture Hall
Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
Abstract
What are the fundamental constituents of matter at the shortest distances? This question has bothered humans almost since the beginning of civilization. At present string theory is the most promising answer to this question. This talk will review the main idea of string theory and some of the recent developments.
Ashoke Sen received a Masters degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and in 1982 a Doctorate in Physics from Stony Brook University. After postdoctoral work at Fermilab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, he returned to India to pursue research in theoretical physics, first at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research and since 1995 at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute.
Sen is recognized as one of the leading theoretical physicists worldwide. His groundbreaking contributions include developing the concept of electromagnetic duality in quantum field theory and string theory, which led to the contemporary unification of all string theories, his work on unstable configurations in string theory ("Sen's Conjectures” on tachyon condensation), and many more. For this work Sen was an inaugural winner of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics by the Milner Foundation and has been awarded the Dirac Medal by the International Center for Theoretical Physics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.