Michael Duff
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about physicist and string theorist Michael Duff. For the British aristocrat, see Sir Michael Duff, 3rd Baronet.
- For the Northern Ireland football (soccer) player, see Michael Duff (footballer).
Michael Duff is Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Abdus Salam Chair of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London.
Duff was educated at De La Salle College, and Queen Mary, University of London before obtaining his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1972 at Imperial College, London, under Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam. After postdoctoral fellowships in Trieste, Oxford, King's College (London), Queen Mary College (London) and Brandeis, he returned to Imperial College in 1979 on a Science Research Council Advanced Fellowship and joined the faculty there in 1980. He took leave of absence to visit the Theory Division in CERN, first in 1982 and then again as a Staff Member from 1984 to 1987 when he became Senior Physicist. He has also held Visiting Professorships and Fellowships at the University of Texas, Austin; the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Kyoto and the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge. He took up his professorship at Texas A&M University in 1988 and was appointed Distinguished Professor in 1992. In September 1999 he moved to the University of Michigan, where he is Oskar Klein Professor of Physics. In 2001, he was elected first Director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics and was re-elected in 2004. He returned again to Imperial College, London and became Principal of the Faculty of Physical Sciences in Spring 2005.
His interests lie in unified theories of the elementary particles, quantum gravity, supergravity, Kaluza-Klein theory, superstrings, supermembranes and M-theory. He is a member of Save British Science and has acted as spokesman for British Scientists Abroad, a group of expatriate scientists who are concerned about the underfunding of British science. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK) and Recipient of the 2004 Meeting Gold Medal, El Colegio Nacional, Mexico.
