Luboš Motl

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Luboš Motl in a restaurant
Luboš Motl in a restaurant

Lubos Motl, in Czech Luboš Motl, (born 5 December 1973) is a Czech theoretical physicist who works on string theory and conceptual problems of quantum gravity.

Motl was born in Plzeň. He received his master degree from the Charles University in Prague, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Rutgers University and has been a Harvard Junior Fellow (2001-2004) at Harvard University where he is now a tenure-track assistant professor. Together with Robbert Dijkgraaf, Erik Verlinde, and Herman Verlinde, he is a co-founder of Matrix string theory, a nonperturbative definition of string theory. Recently he worked on the pp-wave limit of AdS/CFT correspondence; twistor theory and its application to gauge theory with supersymmetry; black hole thermodynamics and the conjectured relevance of quasinormal modes for loop quantum gravity; deconstruction, and other topics. He has a presence on the Internet, where he often participates in heated discussions supporting string theory against loop quantum gravity. Along with Urs Schreiber and Arvind Rajaraman, he founded and moderates the sci.physics.strings newsgroup.

Motl translated The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene to Czech, and together with Miloš Zahradník, he co-authored a Czech textbook on linear algebra (We Grow Linear Algebra).

Motl was one of the few physicists to defend the Bogdanov brothers' papers, though he did state about one that "the detailed structure of the paper (and very similar papers published elsewhere) probably makes no sense - at least no one has been able to understand the content of the paper in detail".[1]

Motl keeps a blog mainly about string theory but also discussing general science, politics and events at Harvard. In science, besides talking about string theory, he frequently criticizes research into global warming. In politics, he was one of few Harvard faculty willing to openly defend president Lawrence Summers's controversial remarks regarding women in science. In religion, following the example of Oriana Fallaci, he counts himself "as a Christian atheist" [2], [3] although he notes "how simple-minded and naive Christianity can be" [4] .

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