Gary T. Horowitz

Professor Gary T. Horowitz is the Distinguished Professor of Physics at University of California, Santa Barbara. Gravity is important both on the large scales of astrophysics and cosmology and on the small scales of particle physics. Horowitz is one of the few scientists to bridge these frontiers. Trained in classical general relativity, his work on the positivity of gravitational energy, cosmic censorship, and the asymptotic structure of spacetime has contributed notably to our present understanding of general relativity. For many years, Horowitz has applied insights from general relativity to understand the gravitational aspects of string theory. His paper with Candelas, Strominger, and Witten on Calabi-Yau manifolds was the most cited paper in particle physics for the '80s. Since then he has contributed a steady stream of important ideas on the nature of singularities, black holes and black branes, understanding the entropy of black holes, and cosmological singularities. Well known for the clarity of his lectures, Horowitz provides a link between scientists working at the frontier of particle physics and those working on traditional gravitational physics. He is a leader in both areas. His leadership has been recognized by such honors as the Xanthopoulos Prize, a Sloan fellowship and election to the US National Academy of Sciences. In 1993 he received the Basilis Xanthopoulos International Prize from the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2002. He has been president of the International Society of General Relaltivity and Gravitation and Chair of the Division of Gravitational Physics of the American Physical Society.