Questions:

1. Name the German physicist who is widely credited with first studying the general theory of relativity in five dimensions, creating the precursors of some ideas that later appeared in string theory.

2. Name the mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998 for explaining ‘monstrous moonshine’, a strange connection between the monster group, a group of relationships used in string theory, and a function in number theory.

3. Name the Indian physicist who was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012 for “opening the path to the realisation that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory”.

4. In 1997, an Argentinian string theorist made an unusual mathematical discovery that – very simply speaking – found a way to connect two theories, one that could ‘explain’ gravity and one that couldn’t. Name the theorist.

5. The Indian physicist Abhay Ashtekar is one of the founders of ____ _______ _______, another theory of quantum gravity that, like string theory, tries to unify gravity with quantum mechanics. Fill in the blanks.

Visual:

This image identifies the solution to an ancient problem. Today, it’s a part of enumerative geometry, a branch of maths in which some solutions have been informed by findings in string theory. Name the problem.

Answers:

1. Theodor Kaluza

2. Richard Borcherds

3. Ashoke Sen

4. Juan Maldacena

5. Loop quantum gravity

Visual: Problem of Apollonius