Introduction to the special issue dedicated to Michael J. Duff FRS on the occasion of his 70th birthday

Abstract

This special feature, dedicated to Michael J. Duff FRS on the occasion of his 70th birthday, concerns topics in 'Quantum gravity, branes and M-theory'. These three intertwining subjects have been central to Duff's work; indeed many of his contributions have come to define significant aspects of what we actually mean by these terms. From the discovery of Weyl anomalies to recognising superstrings in 10 dimensions as a special case of membranes in an 11-dimensional M-theory, Duff's insights have shaped major developments across these themes. So it is an apposite setting for such a celebration and we are delighted to be able to include in this collection contributions from many of the pioneers of quantum gravity, branes and M-theory. The breadth of these topics has placed little constraint on the multiplicity of ideas appearing in these pages, from astrophysical black holes to chaotic condensed matter. Again, this is fitting as Duff's scientific remit spans a remarkable diversity of motifs, from the fundamentals of M-theory to entanglement in quantum information.

Introduction to the Proceedings of the Royal Society A special feature "Quantum gravity, branes and M-theory", located at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/topic/special-collections/duff-quantum-gravity, dedicated to Michael J. Duff FRS on the occasion of his 70th birthday. 10 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (10)

• Conformal collider physics: Energy and charge correlations
• Yang-Mills origin of gravitational symmetries
• Four-qubit entanglement from string theory
• Black Holes, Qubits and Octonions
• E_7 and the tripartite entanglement of seven qubits
• E_6 and the bipartite entanglement of three qutrits
• Wrapped branes as qubits
• Effective actions for dual massive (super) p-forms
• Black Holes and Higher Composition Laws
• Chris Isham: mentor, colleague, friend