Michael Boris GreenFRS HonFInstP (born 22 May 1946) is a Britishphysicist and a pioneer ofstring theory. He is a professor of theoretical physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy atQueen Mary University of London, emeritus professor in theDepartment of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and a Fellow ofClare Hall, Cambridge. He wasLucasian Professor of Mathematics from 2009 to 2015.^[5][6][7][8]

Green was born the son of Genia Green and Absalom Green. He attendedWilliam Ellis School in London andChurchill College, Cambridge^[2] where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts withfirst class honours in theoretical physics (1967) and a PhD inelementaryparticle theory (1970).^[1][9][10]

Following his PhD, Green didpostdoctoral research atPrinceton University (1970–72), Cambridge and theUniversity of Oxford. Between 1978 and 1993 he was a Lecturer and Professor atQueen Mary College,University of London, and in July 1993 he was appointedJohn Humphrey Plummer Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. On 19 October 2009 he was confirmed as the nextLucasian Professor of Mathematics, to succeedStephen Hawking on 1 November 2009.^[5][6] In 2015 he was succeeded in that chair byMichael Cates, a specialist in colloids, gels, and particulate materials.

After many years in collaboration withJohn Henry Schwarz, he co-discoveredtype II string theory in 1982,^[11] and later the anomaly cancellation in type I string theory in 1984.^[12] This latter insight, named theGreen–Schwarz mechanism, initiated theFirst Superstring Revolution. Green has also worked onDirichlet boundary conditions in string theory which have led to the postulation ofD-branes^[13] andinstantons.^[14]

Green has been awarded thePaul Dirac andMaxwell Medals of theInstitute of Physics, UK, theDirac Medal of theInternational Centre for Theoretical Physics (Trieste) and theDannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics of theAmerican Physical Society. He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society in 1989.^[15] Green has co-authored more than 150 research papers.^[7][16]

His nomination for theRoyal Society reads

Distinguished for his outstanding contributions to quantum field theory, especially the theory of superstrings. Green's early work was largely on duality in S-matrix theory. He was the first to prove an important result on the dual model – the cancellation of the leading divergences between boson and fermion loops. He has made significant contributions to the theory of phase transitions, but is best known for his trail-blazing work, much of it in collaboration with Schwarz, on superstring theory, including the first covariant formulation of the theory. The most important results are the proofs in 1984 and 1985 of anomaly cancellation for SO (32) and E8xE8 superstring theories and of infinity cancellation in the SO (32) case.These definitive papers initiated the explosive growth of superstring theory, now one of the most active and exciting areas of fundamental theoretical physics.^[15]

On 12 December 2013, Michael Green shared theBreakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics withJohn Henry Schwarz "for opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces".

• Green, M., John H. Schwarz, andE. Witten. Superstring Theory. Vol. 1, Introduction. Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.ISBN 9780521357524.
• Superstring Theory. Vol. 2, Loop Amplitutes, Anomalies and Phenomenology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.ISBN 9780521357531.

Wikiquote has quotations related toMichael Green (physicist).

• Institute of physics page at theWayback Machine (archived 3 February 2006)
• Green, Michael B.; Schwarz, John H. (2004)."The Early Years of String Theory at the Aspen Center for Physics".Aspen Center for Physics (aspenphys.org).
• "Michael Green – Through a Glass Darkly". GraduatePhysics. 19 August 2014 – via YouTube.
• "Day 3: Theoretical Physics Session". Int'l Centre for Theoretical Physics. 15 October 2014 – via YouTube.
• "Zoomplitudes 2020: Michael Green (Cambridge)". Brown University Department of Physics. 17 May 2020 – via YouTube.

• 1946 births
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