Louise Dolan

Louise Dolan
Louise Ann Dolan (born April 5, 1950) is an American mathematical physicist and professor of physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She does research in theoretical particle physics, gauge theories, gravity, and string theory, and is generally considered to be one of the foremost experts worldwide in this field. Her work is at the forefront of particle physics today.
Biography
After graduating from Wellesley College as a physics major in 1971, she received a Fulbright scholarship and studied at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. She received her Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 and was a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 1976 to 1979. She then joined Rockefeller University in New York City as a research associate, and was promoted to assistant professor in 1980, and associate professor in 1982. In 1990, Dolan joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, department of physics and astronomy, where she now holds the position of university distinguished professor.
Contributions
Dolan is responsible for several important discoveries which have furthered the study of elementary particle physics. She co-authored "Symmetry Behavior at Finite Temperature", now regularly cited, in 1974. This paper became a part of the foundation of quantitative analysis of phase transitions in the early universe in cosmological theories and is widely recognized as a seminal work. In 1981 she pioneered the uses of affine algebras in particle physics and her coruscant contributions to string theory have included symmetries in the Type II superstring and integrable structures in super conformal non-abelian gauge theories. Her work has revolutionized string theory, and she is considered to be the one of the originators of the field.
She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has authored over eighty scientific publications. Dolan is also the principal investigator on a Department of Energy grant, which funds the string theory program at Chapel Hill.
Teaching
Professor Dolan regularly instructs graduate level classes related to quantum mechanics at UNC Chapel Hill. These include Quantum Mechanics I and II, Field Theory, Electromagnetism, and Group Theory.
Awards
1971: Wellesley Alumnae Scholarship
1971: Woodrow Wilson Fellowship
1987: Fellow of the American Physical Society
1987: Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the American Physical Society
1988: Guggenheim Fellow
2004: Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award
References
American string theorists
1950 births
Living people
American women physicists
Harvard Fellows
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty
Wellesley College alumni
Place of birth missing (living people)
The Baldwin School alumni
21st-century American physicists
20th-century American physicists
21st-century American women scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Fellows of the American Physical Society
MIT Center for Theoretical Physics people
American women academics
Particle physicists
Mathematical physicists
American women mathematicians
21st-century women mathematicians
Quantum physicists
Fulbright alumni