Age, Biography and Wiki

Joseph Polchinski (Joseph Gerard Polchinski) was born on 16 May, 1954 in White Plains, New York, U.S., is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist (1954–2018). Discover Joseph Polchinski's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is he in this year and how he spends money? Also learn how he earned most of networth at the age of 63 years old?

Popular As Joseph Gerard Polchinski
Occupation N/A
Age 63 years old
Zodiac Sign Taurus
Born 16 May, 1954
Birthday 16 May
Birthplace White Plains, New York, U.S.
Date of death 2 February, 2018
Died Place Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Nationality United States

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 16 May. He is a member of famous with the age 63 years old group.

Joseph Polchinski Height, Weight & Measurements

At 63 years old, Joseph Polchinski height not available right now. We will update Joseph Polchinski's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible.

Physical Status
Height Not Available
Weight Not Available
Body Measurements Not Available
Eye Color Not Available
Hair Color Not Available

Dating & Relationship status

He is currently single. He is not dating anyone. We don't have much information about He's past relationship and any previous engaged. According to our Database, He has no children.

Family
Parents Not Available
Wife Not Available
Sibling Not Available
Children Not Available

Joseph Polchinski Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2023-2024. So, how much is Joseph Polchinski worth at the age of 63 years old? Joseph Polchinski’s income source is mostly from being a successful . He is from United States. We have estimated Joseph Polchinski's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.

Net Worth in 2024 $1 Million - $5 Million
Salary in 2024 Under Review
Net Worth in 2023 Pending
Salary in 2023 Under Review
House Not Available
Cars Not Available
Source of Income

Joseph Polchinski Social Network

Instagram
Linkedin
Twitter
Facebook
Wikipedia Joseph Polchinski Wikipedia
Imdb

Timeline

1929

Polchinski was born in White Plains, New York, the elder of two children to Joseph Gerard Polchinski Sr. (1929–2002), a financial consultant and manager, and Joan (née Thornton), an office worker and homemaker.

Polchinski was primarily of Irish descent with his paternal grandfather being Polish.

1954

Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr. (May 16, 1954 – February 2, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist.

1971

Polchinski graduated from Canyon del Oro High School in Tucson, Arizona, in 1971.

1975

He obtained his B.S. degree from Caltech in 1975, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980 under the supervision of Stanley Mandelstam.

He did not publish any papers as a graduate student.

1980

After postdoctoral positions at SLAC (1980–82) and Harvard (1982–84) he was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984 to 1992.

Polchinski had two sons, Steven and Daniel, with his wife, Dorothy Maria Chun, whom he married in 1980.

1989

After co-discovering D-branes in 1989, his 1995 work conjectured and partially demonstrated the equivalence between D-branes and black p-branes.

The duality between these objects was soon understood to be a demonstration of holography, in which a theory of quantum gravity (the black p-branes) is equivalent to a lower-dimensional theory without gravity (the D-branes), as later demonstrated in Maldacena's AdS/CFT duality.

1990

In an unpublished communication to Kip Thorne circa 1990, commenting on the Novikov self-consistency principle (in relation to sending objects or people through a traversable wormhole into the past, and the time paradoxes that could result), Polchinski raised a potentially paradoxical situation involving a billiard ball sent through a wormhole which sends it back in time.

In this scenario, the ball is fired into a wormhole at an angle such that, if it continues along that path, it will exit the wormhole in the past at just the right angle to collide with its earlier self, thereby knocking it off course and preventing it from entering the wormhole in the first place.

1992

From 1992 to March 2017 he was a professor in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics there.

1994

Thorne dubbed this problem "Polchinski's paradox" in 1994.

Later students of the whimsical problem came up with solutions which managed to avoid any inconsistencies, by having the ball emerge from the future at a different angle than the one used to generate the paradox, and deliver its younger self a glancing blow instead of knocking it completely away from the wormhole, a blow which changes its trajectory in just the right way so that it will travel back in time with the angle required to deliver its younger self this glancing blow.

1998

Polchinski wrote the two-volume textbook String Theory, published in 1998.

Among his many contributions to theoretical physics, D-branes are the best known.

2008

In 2008 he won the Dirac Medal for his work in superstring theory.

2012

In July 2012, Polchinski, with two of his students, James Sully and Ahmed Almheiri, and fellow string theorist Donald Marolf at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), published a paper whose calculations about black hole radiation suggested that either general relativity's equivalence principle is wrong, or else a key tenet of quantum mechanics is incorrect.

Polchinski was the subject of a running gag on an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

In the episode "The Paintball Scattering", Sheldon would choke up and be unable to respond every time anybody asked if the paper on super-symmetry, which he had recently published with his wife, Amy, was derivative of the work of Polchinski.

2017

He was awarded the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics.

Polchinski's contributions to D-brane physics were a primary trigger of the 2nd superstring revolution and the physics of holographic gauge-gravity dualities.

2018

He died at his home in Santa Barbara, California on February 2, 2018, of brain cancer, at the age of 63.