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Steven Gubser Pens Little Book of String Theory

The 2008 Blavatnik Award winner offers a beginners' guide to the "theory of everything."

Published October 28, 2009

Steven Gubser, a professor of physics at Princeton University, has written The Little Book of String Theory, to be published in April 2010 by Princeton University Press. Gubser, who was one of three faculty winners in the Academy's 2008 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists competition, offers a short, accessible, and entertaining introduction to one of the most talked-about areas of physics today.

Gubser's publisher promises readers that, after reading his book, "you’ll be able to draw your own conclusions about string theory." Gubser begins by explaining Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2, quantum mechanics, and black holes. He then gives readers a crash course in string theory and the core ideas behind it. In plain English and with a minimum of mathematics, Gubser covers strings, branes, string dualities, extra dimensions, curved spacetime, quantum fluctuations, symmetry, and supersymmetry. The publisher says that Gubser describes efforts to link string theory to experimental physics and uses analogies that nonscientists can understand in "the most up-to-date beginner’s guide to this elegant, multidimensional field of physics."