December 17, 2021

Colloquium Topic: Black Holes and the Structure of Spacetime

Black holes are fascinating objects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.  Though they were initially viewed as unphysical solutions, they were later understood to be a solid and generic prediction of the theory.  Black holes give rise to theoretical paradoxes whose resolution requires us to modify our conception of spacetime.  We will review how black holes went from being an obscure detail to a central tool for discovering new perspectives on the nature of spacetime in a quantum theory.

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Colloquium Speaker: Juan Maldacena

Juan Maldacena is the Carl Feinberg professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ, USA.  He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1968, and graduated from the Instituto Balseiro in Argentina in 1991.  He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1996, and was then a professor at Harvard before joining the Institute in 2001.

His research interests include quantum field theory, quantum gravity and string theory.  He has been studying relationships between quantum systems and gravity.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and other distinguished scientific groups.  His awards include the Dannie Heinaman prize, the Dirac Prize, the Einstein Medal, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Fundamental Physics prize, and more.