Jean-Loup Gervais

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Jean-Loup Gervais (born September 10, 1936 in Paris - † February 1, 2020 ) was a French theoretical physicist .

Gervais studied physics and mathematics in Paris, where in 1961 he obtained his diploma and 1965 in Orsay at Claude Bouchiat and Philippe Meyer doctorate . From 1966 to 1968 he was a post-doc at the University of New York City . As early as 1960 he was with the CNRS , from 1970 as Maitre de Recherche. From 1973 to 1985 he was Maître de conférences at the École polytechnique .

From 1979 to 1983 and from 1995 to 1998 he was director of the laboratory for theoretical physics at the École normal supérieure . He was visiting professor at City College of New York several times and also at the University of California, Berkeley , the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge (1997), the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California, Santa Barbara .

Gervais dealt with quantum field theory , supersymmetry and string theory . In 1969 he (at the same time with Benjamin Lee ) investigated the renormalizability of theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking . In 1971 he and Bunji Sakita set up a super-symmetrically invariant Lagrangian function within the framework of the forerunners of string theory, the dual models. In 1969 he calculated single-loop diagrams in early string theory with Daniele Amati and Bouchiat. As early as the early 1970s he investigated string theories as conformal field theories in two dimensions with Sakita and in the 1970s with Sakita soliton theories as field theories of collective suggestions e.g. B. in the context of WKB wave functions . In the 1980s he investigated soliton ( Skyrmion ) models of quarks in the limit of many degrees of color freedom (Large N Limit). In addition, from the 1980s onwards he investigated conformal field theories (such as the Liouville field theory), string theories and two-dimensional quantum gravity under the aspect of precisely integrable systems. With André Neveu , he also investigated non-critical string theories in the 1980s.

In 1997 he received a high price (Le Prix Créé par l´État) from the French Academy of Sciences .

His doctoral students include the particle physicists Antal Jevicki (* 1951, Yugoslavia, professor at Brown University ) and Adel Bilal.

Fonts

  • Editor with Maurice Jacob : Non-linear and collective phenomena in quantum physics. A reprint volume from Physics reports . World Scientific 1983
  • Gervais, Jevicki and Sakita: A collective coordinaten method for the quantization of extended systems . In: Physics Reports . Volume 23, 1976, p. 237

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary
  2. ^ Gervais and Sakita: Field theory interpretation of supergauges in dual models . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 34, 1971, p. 832
  3. ↑ Gervais and Neveu: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 209, 1982, p. 125
personal data
SURNAME Gervais, Jean-Loup
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 2020