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Cumrun Vafa

1 August 1960 – present

Cumrun Vafa is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist at Harvard University who works on string theory. With Andrew Strominger he gave the first microscopic derivation of black hole entropy within string theory, and he introduced F-theory and the swampland programme. He shared the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

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Life events

Born in Tehran, Iran
1 August 1960

Born in Tehran, where he attended Alborz High School.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Birth ✓
Moved to the United States to study at MIT
1977

Left Iran for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he took degrees in mathematics and physics.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Relocation ✓
Graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1981

Received bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Completed a doctorate at Princeton University
1985

Wrote his thesis under the supervision of Edward Witten.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Joined Harvard University
c. 1985

Came to Harvard as a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows and later joined the physics faculty.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Career ✓
Derived black hole entropy from string theory with Andrew Strominger
1996

The Strominger-Vafa calculation counted microscopic states of certain extremal black holes and reproduced the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Introduced F-theory
1996

Proposed a twelve-dimensional formulation used to construct non-perturbative compactifications of type IIB string theory.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Proposed the swampland programme
2005

Argued in a paper on the string landscape that many apparently consistent effective field theories cannot be completed into quantum gravity.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Awarded the Dirac Medal of the ICTP
2008

Shared the medal for contributions to string theory and its connections with geometry.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Shared the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
2017

Received the 2017 prize jointly with Joseph Polchinski and Andrew Strominger for work on quantum gravity and string theory.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓