S. James Gates | |
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| Born | Sylvester James Gates Jr. (1950-12-15)December 15, 1950 (age 74) Tampa, Florida, U.S.[1] |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS,BS,PhD) |
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| Doctoral advisor | James E. Young |
Sylvester James Gates Jr. (born December 15, 1950), known asS. James Gates Jr. orJim Gates, is an Americantheoretical physicist who works onsupersymmetry,supergravity, andsuperstring theory. He is currently the Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. He also holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Science with the physics department at theUniversity of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He is also affiliated with the University Maryland's School of Public Policy. He previously was the Brown University Theoretical Physics Center Director and the Ford Foundation Professor of Physics. He served on former presidentBarack Obama'sCouncil of Advisors on Science and Technology.[2]
Gates, the oldest of four siblings, was born inTampa, Florida, the son of Sylvester James Gates Sr., a careerU.S. Army man, and Charlie Engels Gates. His mother died at age 44 of breast cancer when he was 11. Gates, Sr. raised his children while serving full-time in the U.S. Army and retired as asergeant major after 27 years of service — one of the first African Americans to earn this position. Gates, Sr., later worked in public education and as a union organizer.[3]
Both of Gates' parents were extraordinarily committed to their children's educations, though neither had the opportunity to go to college. Gates, Sr. never finished high school, as he enlisted in the U.S Army at the age of seventeen. He later earned a G.E.D.[4] The family moved many times while Gates was growing up, but, in January 1963, settled inOrlando, Florida, where Gates Jr. attendedJones High School—his first experience in asegregated African-American school. Comparing his own school's quality to neighboring white schools, "I understood pretty quickly that the cards were really stacked against us."[5] Nevertheless, an 11th grade course in physics established Gates' career interest in physics, especially its mathematical side. At his father's urging, he applied for admission toMIT.
Gates received twoB.S. degrees from MIT in mathematics and physics (1973), as well as hisPh.D. (1977). For his undergraduate thesis he wroteOn the Feasibility of Generating Electricity with a Rijke Tube.[6] His doctoral thesis, under the mentorship ofJames E. Young, was the first at MIT onsupersymmetry. WithM. T. Grisaru,M. Rocek andW. Siegel, Gates coauthoredSuperspace, or One thousand and one lessons in supersymmetry (1984), the first comprehensive book on supersymmetry.[7]
Gates has taught every year since 1972.[8] After his graduation from MIT in 1977, Gates accepted a Junior Fellowship at Harvard, the first Black scientist to be appointed a Junior Fellow.[8] He remained at Harvard until 1980, when he accepted a postdoctoral research appointment atCalTech, which lasted until 1982. He was the first Black postdoctoral researcher to be appointed in CalTech's Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at Caltech.[8] In 1982, he returned to MIT as an assistant professor of physics.[9] In 1984, he gained an associate professor position at the University of Maryland (UMD) physics department. Four years later, he became a full professor of physics at UMD, a position he held until 2017, becoming the first African American to have an endowed position in physics at a major American research university.[10]
In 1990, Gates was invited to serve as the chair of an external committee to evaluate the physics department atHoward University. After he submitted the committee's report to the dean, he was asked to join Howard as the chair of the physics department. He accepted and took a leave of absence from UMD from 1991-1993 to serve as chair of the department at Howard.[8] While there, he led the creation of a new NASA-funded research center, called the Center for the Study of Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Atmospheres (CSTEA), of which he served as the first director.[8]
Gates returned to UMD in 1993 and remained there until his retirement in 2017. Just prior to that, he spent a year at Dartmouth as the Roth Distinguished Scholar from 2015-2016.[11] In 2017, he retired from UMD as an emeritus professor and joined Brown University as the Director of the Brown Theoretical Physics Center, the Ford Foundation Professor of Physics, an Affiliate Mathematics Professor, and a Faculty Fellow in the Watson Institute for International Studies & Public Affairs.[11] In 2022 Gates rejoined the University of Maryland as the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, Clark Leadership Chair in Science in the department of physics and the school of public policy at the University of Maryland.[12]
Gates is on the board of trustees ofSociety for Science & the Public and is active in scientific outreach.
Gates was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT (2010–11) and was a residential scholar at MIT'sSimmons Hall. He is pursuing ongoing research into string theory, supersymmetry, and supergravity. His current research focus is onAdinkra symbols, a graph-theoretic technique for studying supersymmetric representation theories.
In 2018, Gates was elected to the presidential line of theAmerican Physical Society: he began serving as its vice president in 2019, served as president in 2021, and past president in 2022.[13] He is also a past president of theNational Society of Black Physicists (NSBP).[11]
Gates' research has played a foundational role in understanding twisted multiplets and their implications for nonlinearsigma models, generalized complex geometry, andduality insupersymmetric theories. He has also authored more than 200 research papers[14]
In the 1980s, Gates co-authored a series of papers that introduced the twisted chiral multiplet, an extension of conventional chiral superfields in two-dimensionalsupersymmetricfield theories. Unlike standard chiralmultiplets, which are constrained by Kahler geometry, twistedmultiplets allow for the formulation ofsigma models on more generalhermitian manifolds with torsion. This work provided insights into the geometric structure ofsupersymmetric theories and extended the classification ofsigma models beyond the constraints established by Alvarez-Gaume and Freedman.[15]
Gates' research demonstrated thatsupersymmetricsigma models incorporating twistedmultiplets naturally exhibit two commuting complex structures, forming an almost product structure on the target space. This structure closely aligns with Generalized Kahler Geometry, a framework later formalized in Generalized Complex Geometry byNigel Hitchin and Marco Gualtieri.[16] His work also explored how dimensional reduction of four-dimensional vectormultiplets leads to the emergence of twisted chiralmultiplets in two dimensions, highlighting deep connections between higher-dimensional supersymmetric theories and lower-dimensional field theories with torsion-preserving symmetries.[17][18]
A major theme in Gates' work is the role ofduality transformations insupersymmetric theories. He showed that chiral and twisted chiral multiplets are dual to each other under certain conditions, a result that mirrorsT-duality instring theory, where B-field transformations relatesigma models with and without torsion. His contributions have influenced research insuperstringcompactifications, particularly in scenarios where non-Kahler geometries arise due to background fluxes.[citation needed]
Gates keeps abucket list with the experimental discoveries that he would like to see happening before he dies.[19] As of 2025, his list includes five items:[20]
Gates' work has earned him recognition byMathematically Gifted & Black as aBlack History Month 2017 Honoree.[21]
On February 1, 2013, Gates was a recipient of theNational Medal of Science.[22] Gates was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2012,[23] and theNational Academy of Sciences in 2013.[24]
Gates was nominated by theDepartment of Energy as one of theUSA Science and Engineering Festival's "Nifty Fifty" Speakers to present his work and career to middle- and high-school students in October 2010.[25]
On December 5, 2016, Gates spoke at the 2016 Quadrennial Physics Congress, the largest ever gathering of physics undergraduates.
In 1994, Gates received theEdward A. Bouchet Award from theAmerican Physical Society "for his contributions to theoretical high-energy physics."[26] In 2023 Gates was awarded anhonorary doctorate by theUniversity of the Witwatersrand in recognition of his contributions to science and his inspiring leadership in the scientific communities in Africa.[27]
He was elected to the 2026 class of Fellows of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[28]
Gates has been featured inTurboTax and Verizon commercials and has been featured extensively onNOVA PBS programs on physics, notablyThe Elegant Universe (2003). He completed a DVD series titledSuperstring Theory: The DNA of Reality (2006) forThe Teaching Company consisting of 24 half-hour lectures to make the complexities of unification theory comprehensible to laypeople.[29]
During the 2008World Science Festival, Gates narrated a ballet "The Elegant Universe", where he gave a public presentation of the artistic forms connected to his scientific research.[30] Gates Appeared on the 2011Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Theory of Everything, hosted byNeil DeGrasse Tyson.[31] Gates also appeared in the BBCHorizon documentaryThe Hunt for Higgs in 2012, and the NOVA documentaryBig Bang Machine in 2015.
