Grand Unified Theory Does Not Include Gravity

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Gravity was so off of people's radar screen that the term grand unified was unification of the electric, the electric week and the strong forces in one hole. In Cambridge at that time, there were two or three people discussing it. My thesis advisor who I could quote because he quoted myself told me not to work on it. He would never get a job. And then several decades later when she was giving a colloquium at MIT, he said: "He added good thing he didn't listen to me"

Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — but it’s only inspiration, not detailed guidance. So it’s easy to “do research on quantum gravity” and get lost in a world of toy models and mathematical abstraction. Today’s guest, Andrew Strominger, is a leading researcher in string theory and quantum gravity, and one who has always kept his eyes on the prize: connecting to the real world. We talk about the development of string theory, the puzzle of a positive cosmological constant, and how black holes and string theory can teach us about each other.

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Andrew Strominger received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently the Gwill E. York Professor of Physics at Harvard University. Among his awards are the Dirac Medal, the Klein Medal, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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