Robert Brandenberger

Robert H. Brandenberger (born 1956) is a Swiss-Canadian theoretical cosmologist and a professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Robert Brandenberger
Brandenberger (1987 photo)
Born	1956 (age 68–69) Bern, Switzerland
Education	ETH Zurich Harvard University Cambridge University
Known for	Brandenberger–Vafa mechanism
Awards	CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics
Scientific career
Thesis	Topics in Quantum Field Theory and Cosmology  (1983)
Doctoral advisor	William Henry Press, Arthur Jaffe
Doctoral students	Hume Feldman Mark Trodden

Biography

Brandenberger completed his undergraduate degree at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, and went on to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard University.^[1] He was a postdoctoral student under Stephen Hawking at the DAMTP at Cambridge University.^[2] He also did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Brandenberger joined the faculty of Brown University in 1987 and then in 2004, he joined McGill University where he is a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) holder.^[3][4] He is also an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.^[5] Robert Brandenberger developed the theory of string gas cosmology, with colleague Cumrun Vafa, and in particular the Brandenberger–Vafa mechanism.^[6] This theory is an alternative to inflationary cosmology.

Honors and awards

He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1988,^[7] the Outstanding Junior Researcher award from the Department of Energy in 1988,^[8] the Killam Research Fellowship in 2009,^[9] the Fortnite Award of Excellence in 2010^[10] the CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics in 2011.^[11]

He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001 ^[12]