Luboš Motl

Luboš Motl
Luboš Motl in 2004
Born	5 December 1973 (1973-12-05) (age 37) Plzeň, Czech Republic
Fields	Theoretical Physics, String Theory
Alma mater	Charles University, Rutgers University
Doctoral advisor	Tom Banks

Luboš Motl (born December 5, 1973) is a Czech theoretical physicist who keeps a blog commenting on physics, global warming and politics. His scientific research concentrated on string theory, of which he has been a passionate defender.^[1] He proposed Matrix string theory in 1997.^[2]

Motl was born in Plzeň, Czech Republic. He received his master degree from the Charles University in Prague, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Rutgers University and has been a Harvard Junior Fellow (2001–2004) and assistant professor (2004–2007) at Harvard University. It was during his years at Harvard that Motl started his blog, "Luboš Motl's Reference Frame", some of which is still hosted on Harvard's servers.^[3] In 2007, he left Harvard and returned to the Czech Republic.

While in Harvard, he worked on the pp-wave limit of AdS/CFT correspondence, twistor theory and its application to gauge theory with supersymmetry, black hole thermodynamics and the conjectured relevance of quasinormal modes for loop quantum gravity, deconstruction, and other topics. He has a presence on the Internet, where he often participates in discussions supporting string theory against loop quantum gravity.^[4]

Motl translated The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene to Czech, and together with Miloš Zahradník, he co-authored a Czech textbook on linear algebra (We Grow Linear Algebra). He also authored L'equation Bogdanov[1], a book published in France discussing the scientific ideas and controversy of the Bogdanov brothers.

Motl keeps a blog mainly discussing general science and politics. The blog discusses new discoveries in string theory and theoretical physics, often clarifies commonly discussed physics topics in the popular media, and points out common errors found in `alternative' theories of physics (such as violations of Lorentz invariance, causality, unitarity, etc). He also frequently disputes what he considers to be alarmism about global warming, and some of the statistical models used by some climate researchers on grounds such as incorrect prior probability distributions.

In politics, he was one of the Harvard faculty who defended then-president Lawrence Summers after his controversial remarks regarding women in science.^[5] He expresses right-wing opinions, e.g. that Greece "needs someone like Pinochet to take over".^[6] In religion, following the example of Oriana Fallaci, he counts himself "as a Christian atheist" [2], [3] although he notes "how simple-minded and naive Christianity can be".[4]

Publications

• Higher-order corrections to mass-charge relation of extremal black holes
• The String Landscape, Black Holes and Gravity as the Weakest Force
• Equivalence of twistor prescriptions for super Yang-Mills
• Cubic Twistorial String Field Theory
• Matrix string theory, contact terms, and superstring field theory
• Heterotic plane wave matrix models and giant gluons
• Asymptotic black hole quasinormal frequencies
• An analytical computation of asymptotic Schwarzschild quasinormal frequencies
• PP-Wave / CFT_2 Duality
• PP-wave string interactions from perturbative Yang-Mills theory
• Nonperturbative Formulations of Superstring Theory (Phd Thesis)
• Two-parametric zeta function regularization in superstring theory
• Proposals on nonperturbative superstring interactions

References

1. ^ Stevens Institute of Technology Center for Science Writings, October, 2006
2. ^ L. Motl, "Proposals on nonperturbative superstring interactions". arXiv:hep-th/9701025
3. ^ Sidneyfest articles, March 2005
4. ^ http://motls.blogspot.com/
5. ^ "Docket Items," March 8, 2005, Reference Frame blog
6. ^ http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/06/strikers-should-be-fired.html

External links

• Luboš Motl's blog
• "The World of Science Becomes a Global Village; Archive Opens a New Realm of Research", James Glanz, New York Times, May 1, 2001
• "Theorists snap over string pieces", Geoff Brumfiel, Nature News, October 5, 2006

Persondata
Name	Motl, Lubos
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 5, 1973
Place of birth	Plzeň, Czech Republic
Date of death
Place of death