Emeritus Professor Theoretical Physics.
Research subjects in the past:
Yang-Mills - gauge theories for subatomic particles and their interactions. The Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. Magnetic monopoles. Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) en the quark confinement mechanism: quarks can exist only in grouplets of two (one quark and one antiquark) or three (three quarks). Planar diagrams and N-to-infinity limits. Anomalies and Instantons. The U(1) problem. Foundations of Quantum Field Theories. Gravity and cosmology in two spacelike dimensions. General Relativity. Quantum Gravity and the quantum mechanics of black holes.
Present research is primarily focused on:
Quantum Gravity and the role played by black holes there. Conformal symmetry in gravity. Foundations of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Deterministic interpretation of Quantum mechanics as envisaged by Einstein. Models for deterministic quantum systems. Physics in the Planckian domain. Generalization of the Hamilton formalism in classical mechanics to integer-valued variables.
Ambassador of the Mars One Project: a serious attempt to create a human settlement on the Planet Mars.
Nobel Prize Physics 1999, with M. Veltman: for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics.
see https://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/cv.html
Nobel Prize ceremony 1999
Links
Chair
Full Professor Theoretical Physics