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Brian Greene

Brian Greene is a physicist who is considered one of the world's foremost string theorists. As of 2003, he is a professor at Columbia University.

He is the author of The Elegant Universe, a popularization of superstring and M-theory, and winner of The Aventis Prizes for Science Books in 2000. The book talks about and opens an argument on how Calabi-Yau manifolds, as the multi-dimensional (11D, 16D, 26D) points, comprise our space-time. The Elegant Universe was later made into a PBS television special with Greene as the narrator. His second book, The Fabric of the Cosmos is about space, time, and the nature of the universe.

Facts

• Brian Greene graduated in 1980 from Stuyvesant High School in New York City.
• He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and went on to receive his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
• He lives in New York.
• He joined the physics faculty of Cornell University in 1990
• Was appointed to a full professorship in 1995
• In 1996 he joined Columbia University where he is professor of physics and mathematics.
• He has lectured at both a general and a technical level in more than twenty-five countries and is widely regarded for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in superstring theory.
• He is the author of The Elegant Universe, a popularization of super string and M-theory, and winner of The Aventis Prizes for Science Books in 2000.
• His second book, The Fabric of the Cosmos is about space, time, and the nature of the universe.
• In his research, Professor Greene has focused on the extra dimensions required by string theory, and sought to understand their physical, mathematical, and observational consequences.
• Professor Greene has had many media appearances including The Charlie Rose Show, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, The Century with Peter Jennings, CNN and Time, Nightline in Primetime, The Conan O'Brien Show, a cameo appearance in New Line Cinema's Frequency, and he recently hosted a three-part NOVA special based on his book.
• Currently, Professor Greene is co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Phyics (ISCAP), and is leading a research program applying superstring theory to cosmological questions.
• He is vegetarian.
• He is one of very few people to have both an Erdos number, connecting him to Paul Erdos by authorship of mathematics paper and a Bacon number, connecting him to Kevin Bacon because he appeared in a film, "Frequency" (2000).

Important contributions to physics

• Brian Greene is one of the fathers of mirror symmetry relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds)
• He (and David Morrison and Paul Aspinwall) also understood the flop transition, a mild form of topology change
• Together with David Morrison and Andrew Strominger, they showed that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point
• He currently studies stringy 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

Publications

• 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.

See also

• Theory of everything