Michael R. Douglas

Michael R. Douglas is a theoretical physicist who has worked in string theory, mathematical physics, computational physics, and machine learning. He received his B.A. in physics from Harvard University in 1983 and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1988 under John Schwarz, one of the creators of string theory. At Caltech he also studied computation and physics with John Hopfield, Richard Feynman and Gerald J. Sussman. As a professor (and director from 2000-2007) in the New High Energy Theory Center at Rutgers University, he made major contributions to the second superstring revolution. In 2008 he became the first permanent member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University. From 2012-2020 he was a researcher at Renaissance Technologies, the quantitative hedge fund. Currently he is a senior research scientist at the Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA), Harvard University, developing new ways to use machine learning in mathematical research. He has a long association with the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES), a world-renowned research center located in France. Douglas is very active in science philanthropy, and from 2013-2021 he was the head of the Friends of the IHES, an American public charity which supports the IHES.