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.

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.

25.07 Linear Feet (3 cartons, 102 half-size document boxes, and 5 single videocassette cases)

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.

The collection is open for research