Peter Freund
Peter George Oliver Freund (born 7 September 1936) is a professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Chicago. He has made important contributions to particle physics and string theory. He is also active as a writer. Peter George Oliver Freund was born, raised and educated in the Romanian city of Timişoara. Because of his participation in an anti-Soviet demonstration in November 1956, Freund was arrested by the communist security police, the Securitate. In 1959 he managed to leave Romania. Freund obtained his PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Vienna. Since 1965 Freund has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Freund was one of the originators of two-component duality which gave the original impetus to what then developed into string theory. He pioneered the modern unification of physics through the introduction of extra dimensions of space and found mechanisms by which the extra dimensions curl up. Freund made significant contributions, to the theory of magnetic monopoles, to supersymmetry and supergravity, to number-theoretic aspects of string theory, as well as to the phenomenology of hadrons. Beyond his work in theoretical physics, Freund is the author of the book A Passion for Discovery, World Scientific, Singapore, New York, London 2007.
