Cumrun Vafa
Iranian theoretical physicist
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Through Mathematics and Physics
Early life and education
Cumrun Vafa was born in Tehran, Iran on 1 August 1960. 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.
He graduated from Alborz High School in Tehran and moved to the United States in 1976 to study at university. He received a B.S. in mathematics and physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1988 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Symmetries, inequalities and index theorems", under the supervision of Edward Witten.
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Academia
After his PhD degree, Vafa became a junior fellow via the Harvard Society of Fellows at Harvard 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 the Institute for Advanced Study, within the School of Natural Sciences and the School of Mathematics in 1994.
Research
Vafa's research is primarily in string theory, and is focused on the nature of quantum gravity and the relation between geometry and quantum field theories. He is known in the string theory community for his co-discovery with Strominger that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a black hole can be accounted for by solitonic states of superstring theory, and for expounding the relation between geometry and field theories that arise through string dualities (culminating in the Gopakumar–Vafa conjecture). This topic has been known as "geometric engineering of quantum field theories".
In 1997, he developed F-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 the cosmological constant problem.
He has made contributions to topological string theories and to the understanding of mirror symmetry.
He is a trustee of Network of Iranians for Knowledge and Innovation (NIKI).