Paul Townsend Explained

Paul Townsend should not be confused with Paul Townend.

Paul Kingsley Townsend FRS (; born 3 March 1951) is a British physicist, currently a Professor of Theoretical Physics in Cambridge University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.^[1] He is notable for his work on string theory.^[2]

Education

He received his PhD from Brandeis University in 1976 for his dissertation The 1/N expansion of scalar field theories supervised by Howard Joel Schnitzer. Since then he has over 320 publications.^[3]

Work

In 1987,,, and Paul Townsend showed that there are no superstrings in eleven dimensions (the largest number of dimensions consistent with a single graviton in supergravity theories),^[4] but supermembranes.^[5] In 1977 he was the first to formulate pure 4D N = 1 supergravity in anti-de Sitter space.^[6]

Awards and honours

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2000.^[7]

External links

• Web site: Ehrenfest Colloquium Paul Townsend, 30 Sept. 2015. May 18, 2016. Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics. YouTube.
• Web site: Joe Polchinski Memorial Lecture: A Brief History of Branes. April 12, 2019. Int'l Centre for Theoretical Physics. YouTube. (lecture by Paul Townsend)
• Web site: Talk 2: Supersymmetry and RCHO revisited (Paul Townsend). October 17, 2021. Latham Boyle. YouTube. (Workshop: Octonions and the Standard Model, Perimeter Institute, 2021)
• Web site: Talk 12: Jordan algebras: from QM to 5D SUGRA to Stnd. Model? (Paul Townsend). October 19, 2021. Latham Boyle. YouTube. (Workshop: Octonions and the Standard Model, Perimeter Institute, 2021)

Notes and References

1. Web site: DAMTP>>People>>Professor P.K. Townsend.
2. http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/p.k.townsend/ Townsend Home Page
3. Web site: INSPIRE-HEP Search.
4. This was demonstrated in: Werner Nahm, "Supersymmetries and their representations". Nuclear Physics B 135 no 1 (1978) pp 149-166,
5. E. Bergshoeff, E. Sezgin and P. K. Townsend, "Supermembranes and Eleven-Dimensional Supergravity," Phys. Lett. B 189: 75 (1987).
6. Townsend. P.K.. Paul Townsend. 1977. Cosmological constant in supergravity. Phys. Rev. D. 15. 10. 2802–2804. 10.1103/PhysRevD.15.2802. 1977PhRvD..15.2802T .
7. Web site: Lists of Royal Society Fellows 1660-2007 . The Royal Society . 19 July 2010 . London . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100324095152/http://royalsociety.org/Lists-of-Royal-Society-Fellows-1660-2007/ . March 24, 2010 .