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Polchinski (Joseph) papers
UArch FacP 74
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Contributing Institution:
UC Santa Barbara Library, Department of Special Research Collections
Title: Joseph Polchinski papers
Identifier/Call Number: UArch FacP 74
Physical Description:
25.07 Linear Feet
(3 cartons, 102 half-size document boxes, and 5 single videocassette cases)
Date (inclusive): 1973-2017
Abstract: Papers of Joseph Polchinski, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. These papers include publications,
correspondence, and handwritten lecture notes and calculations covering from his academic career as a graduate student while
earning his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, through to his professional career as a faculty member at Universtiy
of California, Santa Barbara, and as a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Physical Location: Special Research Collections, UC Santa Barbara Library
Language of Material:
English
.
The collection is open for research
Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Research Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish
or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Research Collections. Permission for publication
is given on behalf of the Department of Special Research Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended
to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.
[Identification of Item], Joseph Polchinski papers, UArch FacP 74. Department of Special Research Collections, UC Santa Barbara
Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Donation from wife, Dorothy Chun, in 2022.
Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr.(May 16, 1954 – February 2, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Polchinski
graduated from Canyon del Oro High School in Tucson, Arizona in 1971, after which he received his BS in Physics from the California
Institute of Technology in 1975, and his PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1980. After four years as a postdoctoral research
associate at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) from 1908-82 and at Harvard from 1982-84, he joined the faculty at the
University of Texas at Austin in 1984. In 1992, he moved to Santa Barbara where he was a Professor of Physics and a Permanent
Member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics from 1992 to March 2017.
Polchinski's contributions to theoretical physics include a modern formulation of renormalization theory and some of the original
work on the string landscape. He is best known for his discovery of D-branes, extended structures that appear to be central
to the mathematics and physics of string theory. He is also the author of a widely used two-volume text on string theory.
Polchinski held a Hertz Graduate Fellowship from 1975 to 1980, and NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship from 1980 to 1982, and an Alfred
P. Sloan Fellowship from 1985 to 1989. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997, a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, and a fellow of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science in 2012. In 2007, he was awarded the 2007 Dannie Heineman Prize in Mathematical Physics of
the American Physical Society, the 2008 Dirac Medal of the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, and the
2013 and 2014 Physics Frontiers Prizes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Polchinski. Accessed on 6 December 2022.
https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/joep. Accessed on 6 December 2022.
This collection contains files generated by Joseph Polchinski throughout his academic career as a graduate student to his
professional career as a physicist, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1978-2014. Materials include calculations,
research drafts, publications related to Polchinski's academic research, and academic lecture notes and class curriculum.
Also included are five recorded public lectures.
The collection is organized first by publication, and then chronologically.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Manuscripts (for publication)
Writings (documents)
Research notes
Publications (documents)
Lecture notes
Course materials
University of California, Santa Barbara. Department of Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara. Faculty