Renata Elizaveta Kallosh uk, Рената Єлизавета Каллош; born 1943) is Ukrainian-American a

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experime ...

. She is a Professor of Physics at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, working there on

supergravity In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity; this is in contrast to non-gravitational supersymmetric theories such as ...

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 ...

and

inflationary cosmology In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularit ...

Biography

She completed her Bachelor's from

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

in 1966 and obtained her Ph.D. from

Lebedev Physical Institute The Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LPI RAS or just LPI) (in russian: Физи́ческий институ́т имени П.Н.Ле́бедева Российской академии наук (ФИАН)), situated ...

, Moscow in 1968. She was then a professor at the same institute, before moving to

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

for a year in 1989. Kallosh joined Stanford in 1990 and continues to work there. In 2009 she received the Lise Meitner Award of the Gothenburg University. In 2014 awarded Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Groningen. In 2017 she was awarded Lorentz Chair position at the University of Leiden, and became a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. Kallosh is best known for her contributions to the theory of

– the supersymmetric generalization of Einstein's theory of

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

. She was the first to quantize supergravity, obtaining the full set of Feynman rules including a new, unexpected ghost particle (now called the Nielsen-Kallosh ghost). This paper also gave one of the first applications of BRST symmetry to express the gauge invariances of gravity, and, incidentally, introduced the name "BRST". She also was the first to understand the structure of divergences in quantum theories of supergravity, showing, among other results, that supergravity with N=8 supersymmetry is finite at least up to 8 loops. She is the author of many papers on

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

solutions in supergravity theories. A particularly influential work is the recognition, in collaboration with Sergio Ferrara, that black hole solutions with higher supersymmetry correspond to attractor solutions of analogue mechanical systems. Kallosh is also known for her contributions to

. In particular, she, along with

Sandip Trivedi Sandip Trivedi ( hi, सन्दिप त्रिवेदी; born 1963) is an Indian theoretical physicist working at Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) at Mumbai, India, while he is its current director. He is well known for h ...

Andrei Linde Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde (russian: Андре́й Дми́триевич Ли́нде; born March 2, 1948) is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Linde is one of the ...

, and

Shamit Kachru Shamit Kachru (born 1970) is a theoretical physicist, a professor of physics at Stanford University, and the Wells Family Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. He served as the Stanford Physics Department Chair from 2018 to ...

, found the mechanism to stabilize string theory vacua referred to as

KKLT mechanism The string theory landscape or landscape of vacua refers to the collection of possible false vacua in string theory,The number of metastable vacua is not known exactly, but commonly quoted estimates are of the order 10500. See M. Douglas, "The ...

after the authors' last names. This mechanism provided a possible theoretical explanation of the anomalously small value of

vacuum energy Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space throughout the entire Universe. The vacuum energy is a special case of zero-point energy that relates to the quantum vacuum. The effects of vacuum energy can be experiment ...

(

cosmological constant In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is the constant coefficient of a term that Albert Einstein temporarily added to his field eq ...

), and a description of the present stage of the accelerated expansion of the universe in the context of the theory of inflationary multiverse and

string theory landscape The string theory landscape or landscape of vacua refers to the collection of possible false vacua in string theory,The number of metastable vacua is not known exactly, but commonly quoted estimates are of the order 10500. See M. Douglas, "The ...

. After the discovery of the KKLT mechanism, her interests shifted towards investigation of cosmological implications of supergravity and string theory. In particular, Renata Kallosh and

, together with their collaborators, developed a theory of cosmological attractors. This is a broad class of versions of

which provide one of the best fits to the latest observational data.

References

External links

*
Renata Kallosh's Home Page at Stanford
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kallosh, Renata 1943 births Living people American string theorists Russian women physicists American women physicists Moscow State University alumni Stanford University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences People associated with CERN 21st-century American physicists 20th-century Russian physicists 20th-century Russian women scientists 21st-century American women scientists