Neil Turok
| Neil Turok | |
|---|---|
Neil Turok in 2008
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| Born | Neil Geoffrey Turok November 16, 1958 Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Residence | Waterloo, Ontario, Canada |
| Institutions |
University of Cambridge Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics |
| Alma mater |
Churchill College, Cambridge Imperial College London |
| Thesis | Strings and solitons in gauge theories (1983) |
| Doctoral advisor | David Olive |
| Known for |
Hawking–Turok instanton solutions African Institute for Mathematical Sciences |
| Notable awards | Maxwell Medal and Prize (1992) |
Neil Geoffrey Turok (born 16 November 1958) is a South African physicist, and the Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His work has been in the area of mathematical physics and early universe physics, including the cosmological constant and a cyclic model for the universe.
Turok was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Mary (Butcher) and Latvian-born Ben Turok, who were activists in the anti-apartheid movement and the African National Congress. After graduating from Churchill College, Cambridge, Turok gained his doctorate from Imperial College, London, under the supervision of Professor David Olive, one of the inventors of superstring theory. After a postdoctoral post at Santa Barbara, he was an associate scientist at Fermilab, Chicago. In 1992 he was awarded the Maxwell medal of the Institute of Physics for his contributions to theoretical physics. In 1994 he was appointed Professor of Physics at Princeton University, then held the Chair of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge starting in 1997. He was appointed Director of the Perimeter Institute in 2008.
Turok has worked in a number of areas of mathematical physics and early universe physics, focusing on observational tests of fundamental physics in cosmology. In the early 1990s, his group showed how the polarisation and temperature anisotropies of the cosmic background radiation would be correlated, a prediction which has been confirmed in detail by recent precision measurements by the WMAP spacecraft. They also developed a key test for the presence of a cosmological constant, also recently confirmed.
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