David Olive

Ian David Olive ( born April 16, 1937 in London, † November 7, 2012 in Cambridge ) was a British theoretical physicist who worked on elementary particle physics.

Olive studied at Edinburgh University and Cambridge University, where he worked as a teacher after his graduation six years. After that, he spent six years at CERN and later at Imperial College London, where he became a professor. After 15 years at Imperial College in 1992 he became professor at the University College of Swansea, where he retired in 2004. Olive was also a visiting professor at Princeton University and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In the 1960s he focused on analytic S- matrix theory and is co-author of a standard work on this area. His work with Gliozzi and Joel Scherk in the 1970s provided convincing arguments for the existence of space-time supersymmetry in the theory of fermionic strings ( NSR string). By Peter Goddard, Jean Nuyts and Claus Montonen he examined in 1977 to magnetic monopoles and their (electro - magnetic ) duality ( Mont Onen- Olive duality ). This duality concept was later in the "second superstring revolution " in the 1990s important (S- duality ). In collaboration with Goddard also he examined the representation of the string theories underlying infinite dimensional algebras.

Olive was a Fellow of the Royal Society in London. In 1997 he was awarded with Peter Goddard, the Dirac Medal ( ICTP ). He was CBE.

His doctoral counted Neil Turok.

Writings

• With Abraham Pais, Maurice Jacob, Michael Atiyah, " Paul Dirac The Man and his Work", Cambridge University Press, 1998 ( chapter on magnetic monopole )
• With Goddard (Editor), " Kac - Moody and Virasoro Algebras -a reprint volume for physicists ", World Scientific 1988
• Richard Eden, Peter Landshoff, John Polkinghorne, "The Analytic S- Matrix", Cambridge 1966, 2002