Malcolm Perry (physicist)

Malcolm John Perry
Born 1951
Birmingham, United Kingdom
Citizenship British
Nationality British
Fields Physics
Institutions DAMTP, University of Cambridge
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Doctoral advisor Stephen Hawking
Doctoral students Robert Myers
Known for Higher-dimensional Gravity, Quantum Gravity, String Theory, Supergravity
Website
Cambridge website

Malcolm John Perry (born 13 November 1951) is a theoretical physicist and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. His research mainly concerns general relativity, supergravity and string theory.

Perry was a graduate student at King's College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Stephen Hawking. He obtained his doctorate in 1978 with a thesis on the quantum mechanics of black holes. In these early years, he worked on several very influential papers on Euclidean quantum gravity[1] and black hole radiation with Gary Gibbons and Stephen Hawking.

After his graduate studies, he worked in Princeton, New Jersey from 1978 to 1986. With his student Rob Myers, he found the Myers-Perry metric, which describes the higher-dimensional generalization of the Kerr metric.[2] He also started working on supergravity, string theory and Kaluza–Klein theory.[3] In his final years in Princeton he worked with Curtis Callan, Emil Martinec and Daniel Friedan to calculate the low-energy effective action for string theory.[4]

In 1986, he returned to Cambridge, being elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he has worked ever since. In recent years, his attention has focused on generalised geometry and the doubled formalism for string theory, extending these ideas to M-theory in collaboration with David Berman.[5]

References

  1. Gibbons, G. W., Hawking, S. W., Perry, M. J. (1978). "Path Integrals and the Indefiniteness of the Gravitational Action". Nucl. Phys. B 138: 141–150. Bibcode:1978NuPhB.138..141G. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(78)90161-X.
  2. Robert C. Myers, M.J. Perry (1986). "Black Holes in Higher Dimensional Space-Times". Annals Phys. 172: 304–347. Bibcode:1986AnPhy.172..304M. doi:10.1016/0003-4916(86)90186-7.
  3. David J. Gross, Malcolm J. Perry (1983). "Magnetic Monopoles in Kaluza-Klein Theories". Nucl. Phys. B 226: 29–48. Bibcode:1983NuPhB.226...29G. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(83)90462-5.
  4. Curtis Callan Jr., Emil J. Martinec, Daniel Friedan, Malcolm J. Perry (1985). "Strings in background fields". Nucl. Phys. B 262 (4): 593–609. Bibcode:1985NuPhB.262..593C. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(85)90506-1.
  5. David Berman, Malcolm J. Perry (2011). "Generalized geometry and M theory". JHEP 1106: 74. arXiv:1008.1763. Bibcode:2011JHEP...06..074B. doi:10.1007/JHEP06(2011)074.

External links