Pierre Ramond (; born 31 January 1943) is distinguished professor of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

Gainesville, Florida Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...

. He initiated the development of

superstring theory Superstring theory is an attempt to explain all of the particles and fundamental forces of nature in one theory by modeling them as vibrations of tiny supersymmetric strings. 'Superstring theory' is a shorthand for supersymmetric string theor ...

Academic career

Ramond completed his BSEE from

Newark College of Engineering {{Infobox university , name = {{nowrap, New Jersey Institute of Technology , image = New Jersey IT seal.svg , image_upright = 0.9 , former_names = Newark College of Engineering (1930–1975)Ne ...

(now

New Jersey Institute of Technology {{Infobox university , name = {{nowrap, New Jersey Institute of Technology , image = New Jersey IT seal.svg , image_upright = 0.9 , former_names = Newark College of Engineering (1930–1975)Ne ...

) in 1965 and completed his Ph.D. in

from

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

in 1969. He was a postdoctoral fellow at NAL (FermiLab) from 1969 to 1971. He became instructor at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

from 1971 to 1973 and assistant professor at Yale University from 1973 to 1976. He moved to

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

as an R. A. Millikan Senior Fellow in 1976. He became a professor of physics at

in 1980, and promoted to his present title of "distinguished professor" in 1999.

Superstring theory

Ramond initiated the development of

. In 1970, Ramond generalized Dirac's work for

point-like particle A point particle (ideal particle or point-like particle, often spelled pointlike particle) is an idealization of particles heavily used in physics. Its defining feature is that it lacks spatial extension; being dimensionless, it does not take up ...

s to stringlike ones. In this process he discovered two-dimensional supersymmetry and laid the ground for supersymmetry in four spacetime dimensions. He found the spectrum of fermionic modes in string theory and the paper started superstring theory. From this paper André Neveu and John Schwarz developed a string theory with both fermions and bosons.] According to

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

, particles can be divided into two types:

bosons In particle physics, a boson ( ) is a subatomic particle whose spin quantum number has an integer value (0,1,2 ...). Bosons form one of the two fundamental classes of subatomic particle, the other being fermions, which have odd half-integer ...

and

fermions In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Generally, it has a half-odd-integer spin: spin , spin , etc. In addition, these particles obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Fermions include all quarks and ...

. The distinction between bosons and fermions is basic. Fermions are particles which have half integer spin (1/2, 3/2, 5/2 and so on), measured in units of Planck's constant and bosons are particles which have integer spin (0, 1, 2 and so on), measured in units of Planck's constant. Examples of fermions are quarks, leptons and baryons. Quantum of fundamental forces such as

gravitons In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical quantum of gravity, an elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitational interaction. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathem ...

photons A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they alway ...

, etc. are all bosons. In quantum field theory, fermions interact by exchanging bosons. Early

string theory In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...

proposed by

Yoichiro Nambu was a Japanese-American physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery in 1960 of the mechanism ...

and others in 1970 was only a bosonic string. Ramond completed the theory by inventing a fermionic string to accompany the bosonic ones. The

Virasoro algebra In mathematics, the Virasoro algebra (named after the physicist Miguel Ángel Virasoro) is a complex Lie algebra and the unique central extension of the Witt algebra. It is widely used in two-dimensional conformal field theory and in string the ...

which is the symmetry algebra of the bosonic string was generalized to a superconformal algebra (the Ramond algebra, an example of a

super Virasoro algebra In mathematical physics, a super Virasoro algebra is an extension of the Virasoro algebra (named after Miguel Ángel Virasoro) to a Lie superalgebra. There are two extensions with particular importance in superstring theory: the Ramond algebra (n ...

) including anticommuting operators also. In 1979, with

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...

and

Richard Slansky Richard C. Slansky (3 April 1940 – 16 January 1998) was an American theoretical physicist. Slansky received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University and his PhD under Elliot Leader from the University of California, Berkeley. As a post-doc h ...

he proposed the Seesaw Mechanism which explains small neutrino masses in the context of Grand-Unified theories.

Honors and awards

Ramond has received several awards for his contributions to theoretical physics. He received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from NJIT in 1990. Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1998 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recipient of the 1992

Boris Pregel Boris Pregel (russian: Борис Юльевич Прегель; 24 January 1893 – 7 December 1976) was a Russian Empire-born Jewish engineer and dealer in uranium and radium. He was born in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, and studied engineering ...

award from the NY Academy of Sciences; 2004

Oskar Klein Medal The Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture at Stockholm University, dedicated to the memory of the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein (1894-1977), is held annually since 1988 by a prominent physicist, who also receives the Oskar Klein Medal. The lecture is spo ...

awarded by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences & Stockholm University; 2007 Lise Meitner Prize from Chalmers Technical University & Goteborg University. In 2015 he received the prestigious

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman. As of 2010 ...

. In 2020, with

André Neveu André Neveu (; born 28 August 1946) is a French physicist working on string theory and quantum field theory who coinvented the Neveu–Schwarz algebra and the Gross–Neveu model. Biography Neveu studied in Paris at the École Normale Supér ...

and Miguel Virasoro, he was jointly awarded the

Dirac Medal The Dirac Medal is the name of four awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations, named in honour of Professor Paul Dirac, one of the great theoretical physicists of the 20 ...

of the

ICTP The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is an international research institute for physical and mathematical sciences that operates under a tripartite agreement between the Italian Government, United Nations Education ...

for their pioneering contributions to the inception and formulation of string theory. In addition, Ramond has played an active role in service to his profession as a scientist and educator. He was President of the Aspen Center For Physics in 2006-2008; he served as chair of the Faculty Senate of the University of Florida in 2004-05, and chair of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society in 2012.

Publications

Articles

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Books

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References

External links

Personal Page of Pierre Ramond

Google Scholar profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramond, Pierre 1943 births Living people People from Neuilly-sur-Seine American string theorists French string theorists 21st-century American physicists New Jersey Institute of Technology alumni Syracuse University alumni University of Florida faculty Yale University faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society