Philip Mannheim
Professor Emeritus
Physics
Research Interests
Philip Mannheim is an elementary particle theorist who pursues research in grandunification and in dynamical models of mass generation, and who has recently become involved in the explosively growing interface between particle physics and astrophysics. He is active in elementary particle theory, many body theory, astrophysics, cosmology, and general relativity. In all of his work, the notion first of maximum symmetry and then second that of symmetry breaking has been an abiding focus. Given this interest in local symmetry, it was thus natural to extend it to gravity as well, and to consider the possibility that just like the other fundamental strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions, gravity might also be a theory with dimensionless coupling constants and purely dynamical mass scales, i.e. that it might be locally conformal invariant. Given this motivation, conformal gravity theory was then explored in detail, and it was found to solve the dark matter, flatness, horizon, cosmological constant, universe age, and cosmic acceleration problems, all naturally, and all without fine tuning. More recently, the same conformal gravity theory has been shown to be consistent at the quantum level; and with it thus being both renormalizable and unitary, it is advanced as a candidate theory of quantum gravity which can serve as an alternative to string theory.
Education
- Ph.D., Physics, Weizmann Institute, Israel, 1971
- M.Sc., Physics, Weizmann Institute, Israel, 1967
- B.A., Physics, Oxford University, England, 1964
Experience
- 1979-present: Professor, Department of Physics, University of Connecticut
- 1976-1979: Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Oregon
- 1974-1975: Research Associate, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
- 1975-1976: Research Associate, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford
- 1972-1974: Research Associate, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
- 1970-1972: Research Associate, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Professional Societies
- Life Member, American Physical Society
Recent presentations
- My time at UConn – a 43 year Odyssey, April 22, 2022
- Talk slides
- Video recording of the talk (video streaming)
- Video recording of the talk (mp4 file)
| philip.mannheim@uconn.edu | |
| Phone | (860)486-3691 |
| Fax | (860)486-3346 |
| Mailing Address | Dept. of Physics, University of Connecticut unit 3046, 196 Auditorium Road, Storrs, CT 06269-3046 |
| Office Location | S413B |
| Campus | Storrs |