John Henry Schwarz

John H. Schwarz is the Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow (1987) and a winner of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2014). Schwarz is regarded as one of the creators of string theory. He is the founder of both supersymmetry and superstring theory, two pillars of theoretical physics research. With collaborators, constructed the first supersymmetric model, proposed superstring theory as the basis for quantum gravity and started the first string revolution by removing a long-standing obstacle, thereby catapulting strings to center stage. In 1974 Joël Scherk and he proposed that string theory should be used to construct a unified quantum theory containing gravitation. His work with Michael Green on anomaly cancellation in Type I string theories led to the so-called "first superstring revolution" of 1984, which greatly contributed to moving string theory into the mainstream of research in theoretical physics. Schwarz received the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 1989, and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics of the American Physical Society in 2002.