Robert Myers

Program :

Cosmology and Gravity

Appointment :

Fellow

Institution :

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Country :

Canada

Robert Myers is a professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a Researcher with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo.  A native of Deep River, Ontario, he received his B.Sc. from the University of Waterloo in 1982, and continued his studies at Princeton University, completing his M.A. in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1986.  Dr. Myers went on to do postdoctoral work at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1986-89, before taking a faculty position in McGill University’s Physics Department.  He moved to his current position at the Perimeter Instiute in Waterloo in Summer 2001.  He also served as Perimeter's Scientific Director from 2007 to 2008. As well, from 2003 to 2008, he held a faculty position in the Department of Physics and Astronomy from the University of Waterloo. He remains active in supervising graduate students with his cross-appointment as an Adjunct Professor there.

He became an Associate of CIFAR's Cosmology and Gravity Program in 1998, and was promoted to Fellow in 2002.  Dr. Myers also serves as an editor of the following journals: Annals of Physics and Journal of High Energy Physics.  From 2001 to 2005, he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the Banff International Research Station.  He received the Herzberg Medal of the Canadian Association of Physicists in 1999 and the CAP/CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics in 2005.  In 2006, Dr. Myers was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.  In 2007-2008, he also served as the Interim Scientific Director of the Perimeter Institute.

Dr. Myers writes:

My current research program is primarily an investigation of various issues of understanding string theory as a theory of quantum gravity.  In the past few years, string theory has been the source of remarkable progress towards understanding the quantum nature of black holes.  For a number of cases, we now have a description of the microphysical degrees of freedom responsible for black hole entropy.  Further, it seems that the necessary tools are at hand to resolve the "black hole information paradox," the apparent violation of unitary time evolution arising in the Hawking evaporation of black holes.