Gerardus' t Hooft

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Gerardus' t Hooft

Gerardus 't Hooft , also Gerard ' t Hooft, (born July 5, 1946 in Den Helder ) is a Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize winner .

Life

Gerard 't Hooft comes from a family of scientists: his uncle was the physicist Nico van Kampen , his grandfather the biologist Pieter Nicolaas van Kampen and his great-uncle the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Frits Zernike . He passed his school leaving examination in 1964 at the Dalton Lyceum in The Hague . Until 1966 he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Utrecht , where he also received his doctorate in 1969 with a subject in theoretical physics . Interrupted by a two-year stay at CERN (1972–1974), he stayed at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Utrecht until 1976. After a short stay at Harvard University and Stanford University , he became a professor in Utrecht in 1977. He was visiting professor at Caltech in 1981 , at Boston University in 1988 and at Duke University in 1989 .

'T Hooft has been married to Albertha Anje Schik since 1972, with whom he has two daughters.

Services

Gerard 't Hooft made important contributions to the renormalization of gauge theories , the confinement of quarks , the theory of anomalies in quantum field theory and the theory of instantons . A monopoly solution in Yang Mills theories is named after him and Alexander Polyakov . His most important achievement is the proof of the renormalizability of Yang Mills theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking, which he produced together with his teacher Martinus Veltman in 1971. Together with other important developments in the early 1970s (e.g. asymptotic freedom ), this led to quantum field theories being made "respectable" again at the time. He developed a perturbative development of SU (N) gauge theories (N → ∞), as a model for the investigation of qualitative properties of quantum chromodynamics , but also e.g. B. of importance for the AdS / CFT correspondence in string theory . Lately he has mainly been concerned with the theory of gravity and developed the holographic principle together with Leonard Susskind .

In 1976 he proposed a solution to the so-called problem in QCD, which led to the strong CP problem (see Axion ).

Gerard 't Hooft received the Spinoza Prize in 1995 and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1999 together with Martinus Veltman for their decisive contributions to quantum field theory and especially the renormalization proof of the theory of the electroweak interaction . In 1999 he received the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize from the EPS.

He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts (since 1981), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (since 1982), the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (since 1984), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1986) and the French Académie des sciences (since 1995).

The asteroid (9491) Thooft was named after him.

Publications (selection)

  • with MJG Veltman: Regularization And Renormalization Of Gauge Fields . In: Nuclear Physics B . tape 44 , no. 1 , 1972, doi : 10.1016 / 0550-3213 (72) 90279-9 (Hooft received the Nobel Prize for this work).
  • A planar diagram theory for strong interactions . In: Nuclear Physics B . tape 72 , no. 3 , 1974, p. 461-473 ( online ).
  • Magnetic monopoles in unified gauge theories . In: Nuclear Physics B . tape 79 , no. 2 , 1974, p. 276-284 , doi : 10.1016 / 0550-3213 (74) 90486-6 .
  • In search for the ultimate building blocks. Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-57883-3 . (popular science)
  • Nobel Lecture: A confrontation with infinity . In: Reviews of Modern Physics . tape 72 , no. 2 , 2000, pp. 333–339 , doi : 10.1103 / RevModPhys.72.333 ( PDF document ).
  • Horizons. In: Erice Lecture Notes . 2003, ( gr-qc / 0401027 ).
  • as editor: 50 Years of Yang-Mills Theory. World Scientific, 2005, ISBN 981-238-934-2 ( online ).
  • Planetary image. Science fiction en real natural history (planetary billiards, science fiction and real science) . Bert Bakker, Amsterdam 2006, ISBN 90-351-3026-X .
  • The cellular automaton interpretation of quantum mechanics , Springer 2016

Further publications under Publications by Gerard Hooft at SPIRES and Gerard 't Hooft . In: arXiv.org .

Web links

Commons : Gerardus' t Hooft  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

proof

  1. ↑ 't Hooft, Gerardus - Author profile . INSPIRE-HEP . Retrieved July 18, 2019.
  2. ↑ 't Hooft: Symmetry Breaking through Bell-Jackiw Anomalies , Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 37, 1976, p. 8
  3. ↑ Gerardus' t Hooft: Computation of the quantum effects due to a four-dimensional pseudoparticle , Phys. Rev. D, Volume 14, 1976, p. 3432, Erratum Volume 18, 1978, p. 2199
  4. ↑ Class Natuurwetenschappen (Buitenlandse Leden): kvab.be
personal data
SURNAME Hooft, Gerardus' t
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hooft, Gerard't
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH The hero