Thomas Hertog is a Belgian cosmologist at

KU Leuven KU Leuven (or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. It conducts teaching, research, and services in computer science, engineering, natural sciences, theology, humanities, medicine, l ...

university and was a key collaborator of Professor Stephen Hawking.

Early life

Thomas Hertog was born on 27 May 1975. He graduated

Summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

from

in 1997 with an

MSc MSC may refer to: Computers * Message Sequence Chart * Microelectronics Support Centre of UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory * MIDI Show Control * MSC Malaysia (formerly known as Multimedia Super Corridor) * USB mass storage device class (USB MSC ...

degree in physics. He obtained his

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

Part III of the Mathematical Tripos Part III of the Mathematical Tripos (officially Master of Mathematics/Master of Advanced Study) is a one-year Masters-level taught course in mathematics offered at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge. It is regarded as one of the ...

and obtained a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

degree at Cambridge with a thesis on the origins of

cosmic expansion The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not exp ...

under the supervision of Stephen Hawking.

Career

Hertog had the opportunity to conduct research with Stephen Hawking in the field of

cosmic inflation 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 singularity ...

, a branch of the

Big Bang theory The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

. He then worked as a researcher at the

University of California - Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the Un ...

in the United States and the

Université de Paris VII Paris Diderot University, also known as Paris 7 (french: Université Paris Diderot), was a French university located in Paris, France. It was one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was split into 13 universities in 197 ...

in France. He became a fellow at

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 ...

in Geneva in 2005. In October 2011, Hertog was appointed professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at KU Leuven through the Odysseus program of the

Flemish government The Flemish Government ( nl, Vlaamse regering ) is the executive branch of the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region of Belgium. It consists of a government cabinet, headed by the Minister-President and accountable to the Flemish Parliament, a ...

. He led a research group studying the relationship between the Big Bang and

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 ...

, with the idea that concepts like space and time lose their meaning. He also emphasized

Georges Lemaître Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( ; ; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first to th ...

's insight that the Big Bang is central to Einstein's

gravitational wave Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system that propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1 ...

s. Hertog worked in the field of

quantum cosmology Quantum cosmology is the attempt in theoretical physics to develop a quantum theory of the universe. This approach attempts to answer open questions of classical physical cosmology, particularly those related to the first phases of the universe. ...

and string theory with

James Hartle James Burkett Hartle (August 20, 1939) is an American physicist. He has been a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 1966, and he is currently a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. Hartle ...

and Stephen Hawking. In 2011, after years of research, they came to a new insight by combining the mathematics of quantum cosmology and that of string theory. In 2018, he published 'A smooth exit from eternal inflation?' with Stephen Hawking.

Selected publications

Books

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Journal articles

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References

External links

* https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9021-5966 * https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Hertog Belgian physicists Living people Alumni of the University of Cambridge 1975 births Academic staff of KU Leuven People associated with CERN {{physicist-stub