Anyone can see that the past is different from the future. Anyone, that is, but theoretical physicists, whose equations do not seem to distinguish the past from the future. How, then, do physicists understand the „arrow of time“ — the fact that the past and future are so different? Leonard Susskind will discuss the paradox of time’s arrow and how physicists and cosmologists view it today.
Lecture held on June 26, 2013
Leonard Susskind
Leonard Susskind (; born June 16, 1940) is an American theoretical physicist, Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests are string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.
Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory. He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of the holographic principle in 1995 and the first to introduce the idea of the string theory landscape in 2003.
Susskind was awarded the 1998 J. J. Sakurai Prize, the 2018 Oskar Klein Medal, and the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 2023.
Definition from Wikipedia – Leonard Susskind