David Tong is a British theoretical physicist. He is a professor at the University of Cambridge, working in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). He is also a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.[1] His research mainly concerns quantum field theory. He is the joint recipient of the 2008 Adams Prize[2] and is currently a Simons Investigator.[3] He is also known for his outreach activities and for his freely available lecture notes covering a wide range of topics in physics.[4]
David Tong | |
|---|---|
| Born | Crawley, West Sussex, England |
| Alma mater |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge |
| Thesis | Instantons, monopoles, and three dimensional gauge theories (1998) |
| Doctoral advisor | Nicholas Dorey |
| Website | www |
Research and career
editTong grew up in Crawley, UK. He attended Hazelwick School before undertaking his undergraduate studies in Mathematical Physics at the University of Nottingham. He completed his MSc in Mathematics at King's College London, and his PhD in Theoretical Physics at Swansea University.[5]
He held research positions at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, at King's College London and at Columbia University.[5] Between 2001 and 2004 he was a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT Center for Theoretical Physics.[6] He joined the faculty at Cambridge in 2004.
Tong works on quantum field theory and its application to different areas of physics. His early work was on solitons and includes the discovery (with Amihay Hanany) of a vortex solution in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories.[7] With Eva Silverstein and Mohsen Alishahia, he proposed a new, predictive mechanism for cosmic inflation based on the Dirac–Born–Infeld (DBI) action which helped motivate more systematic analyses of primordial non-Gaussianity.[8] In work with Andreas Karch, he uncovered a web of dualities in 3d gauge theories.[9]
Tong is known for his widely watched videos on theoretical physics, including a Royal Institution lecture on quantum field theory,[10] and a Quanta Magazine primer on the Standard Model.[11]
References
edit- ^ "David Tong – Theoretical Physicist at the University of Cambridge".
- ^ "List of Adams Prize Winners". 28 December 2023.
- ^ "Simons Investigators". 10 July 2018.
- ^ "David Tong: Lectures on Theoretical Physics".
- ^ a b "David Tong – Physicist – A Short Bio". www.damtp.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 May 2019.
- ^ "Center for Theoretical Physics celebrates 50 years". MIT School of Science. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
- ^ Hanany, Amihay; Tong, David; Tong (17 June 2003). "Vortices, Instantons and Branes". Journal of High Energy Physics. 0307 (7): 037. arXiv:hep-th/0306150. Bibcode:2003JHEP...07..037H. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2003/07/037.
- ^ Alishahiha, Mohsen; Silverstein, Eva; Tong, David (13 April 2004). "DBI in the Sky". Physical Review D. 70 (12): 123505. arXiv:hep-th/0404084. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.70.123505. ISSN 1550-7998. S2CID 6632503.
- ^ Karch, Andreas; Tong, David; Tong (6 June 2016). "Particle-Vortex Duality from 3d Bosonization". Physical Review X. 6 (3): 031043. arXiv:1606.01893. Bibcode:2016PhRvX...6c1043K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.6.031043.
- ^ "Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe - with David Tong". YouTube. 28 December 2023.
- ^ "The Standard Model of Particle Physics: A Triumph of Science". YouTube. 28 December 2023.
External links
edit- "Foundational Questions Institute". FQXi. 24 December 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
- McClellan, Michael D. (7 December 2020). "David Tong – Real Genius". FifteenMinutesWith. Retrieved 25 May 2021.