Cumrun Vafa was born inTehran,Iran on 1 August 1960.[1] He became interested in physics as a young child (with such questions as why the moon did not fall from the sky), and developed his interest in math in high school, fascinated by how mathematics could predict the movement of objects.[3]
After his PhD degree, Vafa became a junior fellow via theHarvard Society of Fellows atHarvard University, where he later got a junior faculty position. In 1989 he was offered a senior faculty position, and he has been there ever since.
Vafa worked at Princeton University within theInstitute for Advanced Study, within the School of Natural Sciences and the School of Mathematics in 1994.[5][6]
Vafa's research is primarily instring theory, and is focused on the nature ofquantum gravity and the relation between geometry and quantum field theories.[7] He is known in the string theory community for his co-discovery withStrominger that theBekenstein-Hawking entropy of a black hole can be accounted for bysolitonic states of superstring theory,[8][9] and for expounding the relation between geometry and field theories that arise through string dualities (culminating in theGopakumar–Vafa conjecture). This topic has been known as "geometric engineering of quantum field theories".
In 1997, he developedF-theory, a 12-dimensional theory that compactifies to 10-D Type IIB superstring theory.
He is also interested in understanding the underlying meaning of string dualities, as well as trying to apply superstring theory to some unsolved questions of elementary particle physics such as the hierarchy problem and thecosmological constant problem.
In October 2025, Vafa was appointed the Timken University Professor at Harvard, the highest distinction a faculty member can receive at the University. The Timken professorship specifically honors distinguished scholars in any field of science.[2]
Hori, Kentaro; Katz, Sheldon; Klemm, Albrecht; Pandharipande, Rahul; Thomas, Richard; Vafa, Cumrun; Vakil, Ravi; Zaslow, Eric (2003).Mirror Symmetry (Clay Mathematics Monographs, V. 1). American Mathematical Society.ISBN978-0821829554.
Vafa, Cumrun; Yau, Shing-Tung (S.T.) (1999).Winter School on Mirror Symmetry, Vector Bundles and Lagrangian Submanifolds. American Mathematical Society.ISBN978-0821821596.
Vafa, Cumrun (2020).Puzzles to Unravel the Universe. Independently published.ISBN979-8642693636.
^"Board of Trustees".www.theniki.net. Network of Iranians for Knowledge and Innovation (NIKI). Archived fromthe original on 2015-04-16. Retrieved2015-04-16.
