Bernard Julia
Encyclopedia
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
theoretical physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
who has made contributions to the theory of supergravity
Supergravity
In theoretical physics, supergravity is a field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity. Together, these imply that, in supergravity, the supersymmetry is a local symmetry...
. He graduated from Université Paris-Sud
Paris-Sud 11 University
University of Paris-Sud or University of Paris-Sud or University of Paris XI is a French university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburb of Paris...
in 1978,
and is directeur de recherche at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
. In 1978, together with Eugène Cremmer
Eugène Cremmer
Eugène Cremmer, born in 1942, is a French physicist. He is directeur de recherche at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In 1978, together with Bernard Julia and Joël Scherk, he co-developed 11 dimensional supergravity theory and proposed a mechanism of spontaneous compactification in field theory.-...
et Joël Scherk
Joël Scherk
Joël Scherk was a French theoretical physicist who studied string theory and supergravity. Together with John H. Schwarz, he figured out that string theory was a theory of quantum gravity in 1974...
, he constructed 11-dimensional supergravity.
Shortly afterwards, Cremmer and Julia constructed the classical Lagrangian for four-dimensional N=8 supergravity by dimensional reduction from the 11-dimensional theory. Julia also studied spontaneous symmetry breaking
Spontaneous symmetry breaking
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is the process by which a system described in a theoretically symmetrical way ends up in an apparently asymmetric state....
and the Higgs mechanism
Higgs mechanism
In particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is the process in which gauge bosons in a gauge theory can acquire non-vanishing masses through absorption of Nambu-Goldstone bosons arising in spontaneous symmetry breaking....
in supergravity
Other work includes a study, with A. Zee, of particles called dyons
Dyon
In physics, a dyon is a hypothetical particle in 4-dimensional theories with both electric and magnetic charges. A dyon with a zero electric charge is usually referred to as a magnetic monopole. Many grand unified theories predict the existence of both magnetic monopoles and dyons.Dyons were first...
that carry both electric and magnetic charges
and many papers on string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
, M-theory
M-theory
In theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified. Because the dimensionality exceeds that of superstring theories in 10 dimensions, proponents believe that the 11-dimensional theory unites all five string theories...
, and dualities
String duality
String duality is a class of symmetries in physics that link different string theories, theories which assume that the fundamental building blocks of the universe are strings instead of point particles....
.
In 1986, Julia was awarded the Prix Paul Langevin of the Société Française de Physique