Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo, and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. Smolin's 2006 book The Trouble with Physics criticized string theory as a viable scientific theory. He has made contributions to quantum gravity theory, in particular the approach known as loop quantum gravity. He advocates that the two primary approaches to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity and string theory, can be reconciled as different aspects of the same underlying theory. He also advocates an alternative view on space and time that he calls temporal naturalism. His research interests also include cosmology, elementary particle theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and theoretical biology.
Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space throughout the entire universe. The vacuum energy is a special case of zero-point energy that relates to the quantum vacuum.
Rodolfo Gambini is a physicist and professor of the Universidad de la Republica in Montevideo, Uruguay and a visiting professor at the Horace Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Louisiana State University.
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, and gravitational-wave astronomy. The institute was founded in 1995 and is located in the Potsdam Science Park in Golm, Potsdam and in Hannover where it closely collaborates with the Leibniz University Hannover. Both the Potsdam and the Hannover parts of the institute are organized in three research departments and host a number of independent research groups.
Gabriele Veneziano is an Italian theoretical physicist widely considered the father of string theory. He has conducted most of his scientific activities at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and held the Chair of Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology at the Collège de France in Paris from 2004 to 2013, until the age of retirement there.
The MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) is the hub of theoretical nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum information research at MIT. It is a subdivision of MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics.
The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP) is a research institute within the Physics Department at Stanford University. Led by 16 physics faculty members, the institute conducts research in high energy and condensed matter theoretical physics.
Thanu Padmanabhan was an Indian theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose research spanned a wide variety of topics in gravitation, structure formation in the universe and quantum gravity. He published nearly 300 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books in these areas. He made several contributions related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and the interpretation of gravity as an emergent phenomenon. He was a Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) at Pune, India.
Aurélien Barrau is a French physicist and philosopher, specialized in astroparticle physics, black holes and cosmology. He is the director of the Grenoble Center for Theoretical Physics, works in the CNRS Laboratory for Subatomic Physics and Cosmology (LPSC), and is a professor at the Joseph Fourier University.
Marcela Silvia Carena Lopez is an Argentine theoretical physicist, and Distinguished Scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, where she is Director of the lab's Theory Division. She is also a professor at the University of Chicago, where she is a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.
Francisco José Ynduráin Muñoz was a Spanish theoretical physicist. He founded the particle physics research group that became the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he was a Professor. He was described by his colleagues as "a scientist that always searched for excellence in research".
Spenta R. Wadia is an Indian theoretical physicist with research interests in elementary particle physics, quantum field theory and statistical physics, string theory and quantum gravity. His other scientific interests are in complex systems including cross-disciplinary biology. He is a recipient of the 2004 TWAS Prize in Physics; the 1995 Physics Prize of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP); and the J. C. Bose Fellowship of the Govt of India. He is an elected member of TWAS, and a Fellow of all the Science Academies of India. In 2024, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the United States' oldest and most prestigious scholarly societies.
Entropic gravity, also known as emergent gravity, is a theory in modern physics that describes gravity as an entropic force—a force with macro-scale homogeneity but which is subject to quantum-level disorder—and not a fundamental interaction. The theory, based on string theory, black hole physics, and quantum information theory, describes gravity as an emergent phenomenon that springs from the quantum entanglement of small bits of spacetime information. As such, entropic gravity is said to abide by the second law of thermodynamics under which the entropy of a physical system tends to increase over time.
Françoise Combes is a French astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and a professor at the Collège de France where she has been the chair of Galaxies and cosmology since 2014.
Christof Wetterich is a German theoretical physicist. He is known for researches in quintessence, Wetterich equation for Functional renormalization, Asymptotic safety in quantum gravity.
Raphael Bousso is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He is a professor at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics, UC Berkeley. He is known for the Bousso bound on the information content of the universe. With Joseph Polchinski, Bousso proposed the string theory landscape as a solution to the cosmological constant problem.
Atish Dabholkar is an Indian theoretical physicist. He is currently the Director of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) with the rank of Assistant Director-General, UNESCO. Prior to that, he was head of ICTP's High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics section, and also Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at Sorbonne University in the "Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Énergies" (LPTHE).
Lucas Lombriser is a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Geneva. His research is in Theoretical Cosmology, Dark Energy, and Alternative Theories of Gravity. In 2020 and 2021 Lombriser proposed that the Hubble tension and other discrepancies between cosmological measurements imply significant evidence that we are living in a Hubble Bubble of 250 million light years in diameter which is 20% less dense than the cosmic average and lowers the locally measured cosmic microwave background temperature over its cosmic average. Previously, in 2019, he has proposed a solution to the cosmological constant problem from arguing that Newton's constant varies globally. In 2015 and 2016, Lombriser predicted the measurement of the gravitational wave speed with a neutron star merger and that this would rule out alternative theories of gravity as the cause of the late-time accelerated expansion of our Universe, a prediction that proved true with GW170817. Lombriser is a member of the Romansh-speaking minority in Switzerland.
Marina Huerta is an Argentinian theoretical physicist and a physics professor. She is known for her work on quantum entropy in quantum field theory. She has provided a new interpretation of the Bekenstein bound. As of 2020, she has 29 peer-reviewed publications with more than 2000 citations.
Francesca Vidotto is an Italian theoretical physicist.
