Michael R. Douglas

Michael R. Douglas ( born November 19, 1961 in Baton Rouge) is an American theoretical physicist who deals with string theory.

Douglas is the son of Ronald G. Douglas mathematics professor. Douglas studied physics at Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in 1983 and received his doctorate in 1988 with John Schwarz at Caltech. As a post - graduate student, he was the 1988/89 Enrico Fermi Fellow at the newly founded at Rutgers University at the University of Chicago and then at Daniel Friedan and Stephen Shenker New High Energy Theory Center ( NHETC ). In 1990 he became assistant professor there in 1995 and associate professor. In 1990 he was a visiting scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. At MIT, he was in the team of Gerald J. Sussman in the construction of a special computer for calculations in celestial mechanics (Digital Orrery ). 1997/98 he spent a year as a professor at the IHES in France, where since 1999 he is a Visiting Fellow. In 1999 he returned to Rutgers University, where in 2000 he was director of the NHETC. In 2008 he went to the newly established Simons Center for Geometry and Physics of SUNY.

Douglas is known for his involvement in the development of matrix models of superstring theory (M- theory) for research on D- branes and noncommutative geometry in string theory. He also deals with the String Landscape, the construction of vacua of string theory and derivation of the statistical distribution of their observable consequences. Since his time at MIT, he is also interested in computer applications in physics.

In 1991 he was Sloan Fellow and received a Presidential Young Investigator Award. 2000 he received the Sackler Prize in theoretical physics. In 2002 he was Invited Speaker ( Dirichlet branes, homological mirror symmetry and stability ) at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing.

He has been married since 1997 and has two children. His wife Nina writes and illustrates children's books.