Sylvester James Gates
| Sylvester James Gates | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
December 15, 1950 Tampa, Florida, U.S.[1] |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | James E. Young |
| Known for |
Supersymmetry String Theory Supergravity Supersymmetry nonrenormalization theorems Superconformal algebra Adinkra symbols Bihermitian manifolds |
| Notable awards |
Klopsteg Memorial Award (2003) National Medal of Science (2013) |
Sylvester James Gates Jr. (born December 15, 1950), known as S. James Gates Jr. or Jim Gates, is an American theoretical physicist, known for work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. He is currently a professor in the physics department at the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, a University of Maryland Regents Professor and served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.[2]
Biography
Gates received BS (1973) and PhD (1977) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis was the first at MIT on supersymmetry. With M. T. Grisaru, M. Rocek and W. Siegel, Gates coauthored Superspace, or One thousand and one lessons in supersymmetry (1984), the first comprehensive book on supersymmetry.[3]
Gates is on the board of trustees of Society for Science & the Public and is active in scientific outreach.
Gates was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT (2010–11) and was a Residential Scholar at MIT's Simmons Hall. He is pursuing ongoing research into string theory, supersymmetry, and supergravity at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics. His research focuses on Adinkra symbols as representations of supersymmetric algebras.
Awards and recognition
On February 1, 2013, Gates was a recipient of the National Medal of Science.[4] Gates was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.[5]
Gates was nominated by the Department of Energy as one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's "Nifty Fifty" Speakers to present his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010.[6] On November 5, 2016, Gates spoke at the 2016 Quadrennial Physics Congress, the largest ever gathering of physics undergraduates.
Media appearances
Recently Gates has been featured in a TurboTax commercial and has been featured extensively on NOVA PBS programs on physics, notably "The Elegant Universe" (2003). He completed a DVD series titled Superstring Theory: The DNA of Reality (2006) for The Teaching Company consisting of 24 half-hour lectures to make the complexities of unification theory comprehensible to laypeople.[7] During the 2008 World Science Festival, Gates narrated a ballet "The Elegant Universe", where he gave a public presentation of the artistic forms connected to his scientific research.[8] Gates Appeared on the 2011 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Theory of Everything, hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.[9] Gates also appeared in the BBC Horizon documentary The Hunt for Higgs in 2012. Gates recently appeared in another NOVA documentary "Big Bang Machine" in 2015.
Publications
- Superspace or 1001 Lessons in Supersymmetry, (with M. T. Grisaru, M. Roček, and W. Siegel), Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company (1983), Reading, MA (On-line; http://aps.arXiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0108200).
- L'arte della fisica superspace, Stringhe, superstringhe, teoria unificata dei campi, 2006, Di Renzo Editore, ISBN 88-8323-155-4.
Notes
- ↑ CV
- ↑ "UMD PCAST announcement". University of Maryland. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
- ↑ Gates, S. James; Grisaru, M. T.; Rocek, M.; Siegel, W. (1983). "Superspace". American Institute of Physics.
- ↑ http://bigstory.ap.org/photo/barack-obama-sylvester-james-gates-0
- ↑ "S. James Gates". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2015-07-28.
- ↑ Nifty Fifty, USA Science and Engineering Festival
- ↑ "Sylvester James Gates Jr. lecture". News@Concordia. Concordia University.
- ↑ Armitage, Karole; Ligeti, Lukas; Gates, Jim. "The Elegant Universe". Science & the City Podcast. New York Academy of Sciences. Retrieved December 1, 2015.
- ↑ 2011 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Theory of Everything on YouTube