Melanie Becker

Melanie Becker (born August 12, 1966 in Ahaus ; † March 13, 2020 in College Station , Texas ) was a German theoretical physicist .

Becker obtained her diploma from the University of Bonn ( cum laude ) with Werner Nahm in 1991 and then studied at CERN with Luis Alvarez-Gaumé until 1994 ( Non-perturbative approach to two dimensional supergravity and super Virasoro constraints ). In 1994 she did her doctorate with Alvarez-Gaumé and Nahm in Bonn. From 1994 to 1997 she was a Post-Doc at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and then until 2000 Senior Research Fellow at Caltech with John Schwarz . In 2000 she became an Assistant Professor and in 2004 an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland . From 2005 she was a professor at Texas A&M University . In 2005/06 she was visiting professor at Radcliffe College , Harvard . In 2007/8 she was at the Institute for Advanced Study .

Becker dealt with string theory ( brane theories, M-theory, applications of string theory in cosmology and elementary particle physics of the standard model for compactifications on manifolds with torsion). With her sister Katrin Becker , with whom she worked closely, and John Schwarz, she wrote a textbook on string theory. She was co-organizer of several string theory conferences (for example Strings 2010 at Texas A&M).

From 2001 to 2004 she was a Sloan Fellow .

Fonts

• Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker, John Schwarz: String Theory and M-Theory: a modern introduction , Cambridge University Press 2007, ISBN 0521860695

Web links

• Homepage. Department of Physics & Astronomy, Texas A&M University(English). 
• Radcliffe College website. Archived from the original on August 14, 2010 . 
• Obituary. Department of Physics & Astronomy, Texas A&M University, accessed March 20, 2020 .