Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli is an Italian-born physicist who now works at the University of the Mediterraneum and the Centre de Physique Theorique in Marseille, France. He is also affiliated Professor in the Departmenet of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He graduated in 1986, University of Padova, Italy. His work is mainly in the field of quantum gravity.

In 1988, Carlo Rovelli and Lee Smolin have introduced a theory of quantum gravity denoted loop quantum gravity. In 1995, they have obtained an explicit basis of states of quantum gravity, labelled by Penrose's spin networks, and using this basis they have shown that the theory predicts that area and volume are quantized. This result indicates the existence of a discrete structure of space at very small scale.