Joseph polansky biography

American theoretical physicist and string theorist (1954–2018)

Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr.^[2] (; May 16, 1954 – February 2, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist.^[3][4]

Biography

Polchinski was born in White Plains, New York, the elder of two children to Joseph Gerard Polchinski Sr.

(1929–2002),^[5] a financial consultant and manager, and Joan (née Thornton), an office worker and homemaker.^[6] Polchinski was primarily of Irish descent with his paternal grandfather being Polish.^[7]

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

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. After postdoctoral positions at SLAC (1980–82) and Harvard (1982–84) he was a professor at the Univ Joseph Polansky - Liberty Books SOK