# nLab Michael Duff

Michael Duff is professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London. $\;\;$

He made foundational contributions to string theory and M-theory. $\;\;$

Among Duff’s former students is Hisham Sati.

## Quotes

On the open problem of formulating M-theory:

The overriding problem in superunification in the coming years will be to take the Mystery out of M-theory, while keeping the Magic and the Membranes.

Despite all these successes, physicists are glimpsing only small corners of M-theory; the big picture is still lacking.

$[...]$

Indeed future historians may judge the late 20th century as a time when theorists were like children playing on the seashore, diverting themselves with the smoother pebbles or prettier shells of superstrings while the great ocean of M-theory lay undiscovered before them.

we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of the ultimate meaning of M-theory, and for the time being therefore, M stands for Magic and Mystery too.

future historians may judge the period 1984-95 as a time when theorists were like boys playing by the sea shore, and diverting themselves with the smoother pebbles or prettier shells of perturbative ten-dimensiorial superstrings while the great ocean of non-perturbative eleven-dimensional M-theory lay all undiscovered before them.

Interview with Mike Duff by Graham Fermelo, The universe speaks in numbers – Interview 14 (web):

(17:04) The problem we face is that we have a patchwork understanding of M-theory, like a quilt. We understand this corner and that corner, but what’s lacking is the overarching big picture. So directly or indirectly, my research hopes to explain what M-theory really is. We don’t know what it is.

In a certain sense, and this is not a popular statement, I think it’s premature to be asking: “What are the empirical consequences”, because it’s not yet in a mature enough state, where we can sensibly make falsifiable prediction.

## Selected writing

On double dimensional reduction of the super-membrane (the M2-brane) to the Green-Schwarz superstring:

• Michael Duff, Kaluza-Klein Theory in Perspective, Proc. of the Symposium: The Oskar Klein Centenary, World Scientific, Singapore. 1994. (arXiv:hep-th/9410046)

and specifically in supergravity:

On black M2-brane-solutions to D=11 supergravity:

On M-theory:

On the brane scan which classifies super $p$-brane sigma-models given by Green-Schwarz action functionals:

• Michael Duff, Supermembranes: the first fifteen weeks CERN-TH.4797/87 (1987) (scan)

and specifically on the I8-term:

category: people

Last revised on January 20, 2020 at 02:49:36. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.