Background
Douglas was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Nancy and Ronald G. Douglas, a mathematician specializing in operator algebras.
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Michael Douglas
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He then went to Caltech and received a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1988 under John Schwarz, one of the developers and leading researchers in superstring theory. After completing his Doctor of Philosophy, Douglas was a postdoc at the University of Chicago for one year, then moved to Rutgers University in 1989 with Dan Friedan and Steve Shenker to help start the New High Energy Theory Center (NHETC).
Career
He received his bachelor"s degree in physics from Harvard University. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1990 but spent his first year visiting the École Normale Supérieure and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He then returned to Rutgers and in 2000 became the director of the NHETC. He was on the team (led by Gerald J Sussman) that built the Digital Orrery, a special-purpose computer for computations in celestial mechanics, and maintains an active interest in computer science.
He is also very active in organizing schools and workshops, for example at Les Houches, Cargese, and the KITP Santa Barbara.
In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Douglas is married and has two children.
Achievements
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Douglas is best known for the development of matrix models (the first nonperturbative formulations of string theory), for his work on Dirichlet branes and on noncommutative geometry in string theory, and for the development of the statistical approach to string phenomenology.
Membership
American Mathematical Society]
In 2008, Douglas moved from Rutgers to become the first permanent member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, a research center at Stony Brook University.
