Leonard Susskind works on string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology at Stanford.

Why you should listen

Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Physics at Stanford University. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics, and quantum cosmology. He received the Pregel Award from the New York Academy of Science (1975), and the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society (1998) "for his pioneering contributions to hadronic string models, lattice gauge theories, quantum chromodynamics, and dynamical symmetry breaking." He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, since 2009, has been serving as Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics.

He is a recent recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Science and Technology for The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics.

Leonard Susskind’s TED talk