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Juan Maldacena
1997· Person
ProvenTested many times; part of working physics.
Juan Maldacena (born 1968) is an Argentine theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
See it on the Science map →How it works
In late 1997, at 29, Maldacena studied stacks of membranes in string theory and noticed the same system could be described two ways: as a gravity theory in a curved space, or as an ordinary particle theory without gravity on that space's boundary. He proposed the two are exactly equivalent. This AdS/CFT duality became one of the most cited papers in physics. In 2013 he and Leonard Susskind proposed ER = EPR, linking wormholes and entanglement.
Why it matters
He gave the holographic principle its first precise, calculable example, turning a vague idea into a working tool used across black-hole, nuclear and materials physics.
How the work held up
His duality has passed thousands of independent mathematical checks since 1997. He received the first Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012. It remains unproven rigorously and untested in our own universe.
Still a mystery
Whether a version of his duality applies to our universe, which is not anti-de Sitter space, is unknown.
Connections (2)
▸Juan Maldacena discovered AdS/CFT: a working hologram (in the math)Well supported
The relationship
Maldacena compared two descriptions of the same stack of string-theory membranes and noticed that, at low energies, one became a pure particle theory and the other became gravity in curved space. He boldly conjectured they were the same theory in different clothes, and laid out how quantities on each side match.
How the link was found
Juan Maldacena, posted November 1997 and published 1998, while at Harvard. It became among the most cited papers in high-energy physics.
Is it proven?
Thousands of follow-up checks agree. He received the 2012 Breakthrough Prize partly for it. It remains a conjecture without full mathematical proof.
Open questions and mysteries
Why the duality works so well, and whether a deeper principle underlies it, is still being explored.
▸Juan Maldacena proposed with Susskind ER = EPR: entanglement may build spaceSpeculative
The relationship
Maldacena had shown in 2001 that two black holes sharing a special entangled state are, in the gravity picture, the two mouths of one wormhole. In 2013 he and Susskind generalized: maybe all entanglement corresponds to some kind of wormhole connection, and all such wormholes to entanglement.
How the link was found
Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind, "Cool horizons for entangled black holes" (2013), building on Maldacena's 2001 eternal black hole paper and Mark Van Raamsdonk's 2010 work.
Is it proven?
It holds in AdS/CFT model calculations for black holes. The general claim is conjecture, without experimental test.
Open questions and mysteries
Whether it works for small systems like two electrons, where no clear geometry exists, is open.