Related papers: String Theory: The Early Years
The first part of this report gives a very quick sketch of how string theory concepts originated and evolved during its first 25 years (1968-93). The second part presents a somewhat more detailed discussion of the highlights of the past…
This article surveys some of the highlights in the development of string theory through the first superstring revolution in 1984. The emphasis is on topics in which the author was involved, especially the observation that critical string…
I worked on String Theory over a period of five years during the First String Era, the most intellectually satisfying years of my scientific life. One of the early prospectors in the String Theory Mine, I was fortunate enough to contribute…
These are my personal impressions of the environment in which string theory was born, and what the important developments affecting my work were during the hadronic string era, 1968-1974. I discuss my motivations and concerns at the time,…
These notes on string theory are based on a series of talks I gave during my graduate studies. As the talks, this introductory essay is intended for young students and non-string theory physicists.
This lecture presents a brief overview of the early history of string theory and supersymmetry. It describes how the S-matrix theory program for understanding the strong nuclear force evolved into superstring theory, which is a promising…
This article provides some historical background and then reviews developments in string theory over the last twenty-five years or so. Both perturbative and non-perturbative approaches to string theory are surveyed and their impact on how…
This is an invited contribution to the Special Issue of "Foundations of Physics" titled "Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations". I have been asked to assess string theory as an outsider, and to compare it with the…
In this contribution we go through the developments that in the years 1968 to 1974 led from the Veneziano model to the bosonic string.
These notes are based on lectures given by Michael Green during Part III of the Mathematics Tripos (the Certificate for Advanced Study in Mathematics) in the Spring of 2003. The course provided an introduction to string theory, focussing on…
I discuss the early developments of string theory with respect to its connection with gauge theory and general relativity from my own perspective. The period covered is mainly from 1969 to 1974, during which I became involved in research on…
These are the lecture notes of the introductory String Theory course held by one of the authors for the master program of Theoretical Physics at Turin University. The world-sheet approach to String Theory is pedagogically introduced in the…
The string theory introduced in early 1971 by Ramond, Neveu, and myself has two-dimensional world-sheet supersymmetry. This theory, developed at about the same time that Golfand and Likhtman constructed the four-dimensional super-Poincar\'e…
String theory has transformed our understanding of geometry, topology and spacetime. Thus, for this special issue of Foundations of Physics commemorating "Forty Years of String Theory", it seems appropriate to step back and ask what we do…
This is a short account, based on a talk given at the 2024 Moriond Cosmology Conference, of where and why string theory matters in early universe cosmology. It is written for a cosmology audience predisposed to be at best sceptical, and at…
String theory is the most promising candidate theory for a unified description of all fundamental forces exist in the nature. It provides a mathematical framework that combine quantum theory with Einstein's general theory of relativity. But…
This is an introduction to some recent developments in string theory and M theory. We try to concentrate on the main physical aspects, and often leave more technical details to the original literature.
There have been many remarkable developments in our understanding of superstring theory in the past few years, a period that has been described as ``the second superstring revolution.'' Several of them are discussed here. The presentation…
The talk contains a brief introduction string theory, followed by a discussion of some of the recent developments.
String theory has been the dominating research field in theoretical physics during the last decades. Despite the considerable time elapse, no new testable predictions have been derived by string theorists and it is understandable that…