David Olive

David Ian Olive CBE FRS FLSW (/ˈɒlɪv/ ( listen ⓘ); 16

April 1937 – 7 November 2012) was a British David Olive
CBE FRS FLSW
theoretical physicist. Olive made fundamental
contributions to string theory and duality theory, he is
particularly known for his work on the GSO projection
and Montonen–Olive duality.

He was professor of physics at Imperial College,

London, from 1984 to 1992.[6] In 1992 he moved to
Swansea University to help set up the new theoretical
physics group.[4]

He was awarded the Dirac Prize and Medal of the

International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 1997.[1]
He was a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of
Wales.[4] He was elected as a fellow of the Royal
Society in 1987, and appointed CBE in 2002.[6] Born David Ian Olive
16 April 1937[3]
Middlesex, England[4]
Biography Died 7 November 2012 (aged 75)[5]
Cambridge, England
Nationality British
Early life and education
Alma mater University of Edinburgh (BA,
David Olive was born in Middlesex in 1937[3] and
1958)
educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and
Edinburgh University. He then moved to St John's St John's College, Cambridge
(PhD, 1963)
College, Cambridge, obtaining his PhD under the
supervision of John Taylor in 1963.[4] Known for GKO construction
GSO projection
He married Jenny in 1963; they had 2 daughters and a
granddaughter. Montonen–Olive duality
Spouse Jenny Olive ​(m. 1963)​[4]

Career Awards Dirac Medal[1]

Scientific career
After a short postdoctoral appointment at the Carnegie
Institute in Pittsburgh, Olive returned to Cambridge as Fields Theoretical physics
a Fellow of Churchill College, becoming a Lecturer in Institutions University of Cambridge
the Department of Applied Mathematics and Carnegie Institute of
Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) in 1965. Here he made Technology
key contributions to the approach to particle physics CERN
known as S-matrix theory. His 1966 book The Analytic Imperial College London
S-matrix co-authored with Richard Eden, Peter University of Swansea
Landshoff and John Polkinghorne, remains a definitive Thesis Unitarity and S-matrix theory
text on the subject and is known as ELOP.[4] (1963)
Doctoral John Clayton Taylor[2]
In 1971, Olive made what he has described as a
"momentous personal decision" to sacrifice his tenured advisor
position in Cambridge and move to the Theory Doctoral Neil Turok[2]
Division, CERN as a fixed-term staff member. He was students Ed Corrigan[2]
part of a team assembled by Daniele Amati to work on Andrew Crumey[2]
the theory originally known as the dual resonance
model but shortly to be recognised as string theory. In CERN, Olive began the collaborations with the
circle of string theorists many of whom feature in his memoir From Dual Fermion to Superstring. His
work at CERN, in part in collaboration with Lars Brink and Ed Corrigan, initially focused on the
consistent formulation of dual fermion amplitudes, generalising the existing bosonic models. This period
saw several of Olive's major contributions to string theory, including the Gliozzi-Scherk-Olive (GSO)
projection which elucidated the role of spacetime supersymmetry in ensuring consistency of the dual
fermion model and was to prove an essential step in establishing 10-dimensional superstring theory. He
was one of the first to become convinced of the conceptual revolution whereby string theory is viewed as
a unified theory of all particle interactions, including gravity, rather than simply as a model of hadrons.
This was the subject of his plenary talk at the 1974 Rochester conference in London.[4]

In 1977, Olive returned to the UK to take up a lectureship at Imperial College, becoming Professor in
1984 and Head of the Theoretical Physics Group in 1988. He had by now begun collaboration with Peter
Goddard and together they produced a series of papers on the mathematical foundations of string theory,
notably on Virasoro and Kac-Moody algebras and their representations and relation to vertex operators.
One outcome of their work on algebras and lattices was the identification of the special role played by the
two Lie groups SO(32) and E8 x E8, which would shortly be shown by Michael Green and John Schwarz
to exhibit anomaly cancellation that led to the renaissance of string theory in 1984.[4]

This body of work from 1973 to 1983 was recognised with the award of the prestigious Dirac Medal in
1997 to Goddard and Olive "in recognition of their far-sighted and highly influential contributions to
theoretical physics. They have contributed many crucial insights that shaped our emerging understanding
of string theory and have also had a far-reaching impact on our understanding of 4-dimensional field
theory.” The Dirac Medal also recognised a second major line of research pioneered by Olive, on duality
symmetries in gauge field theories, this work was to play a key role in later developments of M-theory.
While still at CERN, Olive had begun to study the magnetic monopoles which 't Hooft and Polyakov had
shown existed in non-abelian gauge theories, publishing a paper with Peter Goddard and Jean Nuyts.[7] In
1977, together with Claus Montonen, he made the remarkable conjecture that there should exist an
electromagnetic dual theory in which the roles of monopoles and gauge bosons are interchanged. In
subsequent work with Ed Witten, Olive showed that this duality is realised in a certain class of
supersymmetric theories.[8] This Montonen-Olive duality was later found to emerge from a deeper web of
dualities underlying M-theory, ushering in the second superstring revolution of the mid 1990s.[4]

In 1992, Olive left Imperial to take up a research professorship in mathematics and physics at Swansea
University, where together with Ian Halliday he built the theoretical particle physics group. He continued
to work on mathematical physics, exploring the deep symmetries underlying quantum field theories,
especially affine Toda theory. His retirement was marked by a conference "Strings, Gauge Fields and
Duality" held in his honour in Swansea in 2004.[9][4] He presented the Dirac Lecture at DAMTP on 14
June 2004 titled The Eternal Magnetic Monopole.

Selected publications

Books
Eden, R. J.; Landshoff, P. V.; Olive, D. I.; Polkinghorne, J. C. (1966). The Analytic S-Matrix
(https://books.google.com/books?id=VWTnlTyjwjMC) (2002 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0-521-04869-9. LCCN 66013387 (https://lccn.loc.gov/66013387).
OCLC 49737553 (https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/49737553).
Olive, D.; West, P. C. (8 July 1999). Duality and Supersymmetric Theories (https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=DMyne8ZM8K4C). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-
64158-6. LCCN 99018753 (https://lccn.loc.gov/99018753). OCLC 40762790 (https://search.
worldcat.org/oclc/40762790).
Olive, D. (12 April 2012). "From Dual Fermion to Superstring". In Cappelli, Andrea;
Castellani, Elena; Colomo, Filippo; Di Vecchia, Paolo (eds.). The Birth of String Theory (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=WNZyoUteXIkC). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-
521-19790-8. LCCN 2011052388 (https://lccn.loc.gov/2011052388). OCLC 939628805 (http
s://search.worldcat.org/oclc/939628805).
Pais, A.; Jacob, M.; Olive, D. I.; Atiyah, M. F. (1998). Goddard, P. (ed.). Paul Dirac: The Man
and His Work (https://archive.org/details/isbn_0521583829). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0-521-58382-9. LCCN 97022443 (https://lccn.loc.gov/97022443).
OCLC 833170188 (https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/833170188).

Academic papers
Goddard, P.; Nuyts, J.; Olive, D. (1977). "Gauge theories and magnetic charge" (https://cds.
cern.ch/record/422230/files/CM-P00061871.pdf) (PDF). Nuclear Physics B. 125 (1): 1–28.
Bibcode:1977NuPhB.125....1G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1977NuPhB.125....1G).
doi:10.1016/0550-3213(77)90221-8 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0550-3213%2877%299022
1-8). ISSN 0550-3213 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0550-3213).
Gliozzi, F.; Scherk, J.; Olive, D. (1977). "Supersymmetry, supergravity theories and the dual
spinor model" (https://cds.cern.ch/record/203097/files/CM-P00061869.pdf) (PDF). Nuclear
Physics B. 122 (2): 253–290. Bibcode:1977NuPhB.122..253G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.ed
u/abs/1977NuPhB.122..253G). doi:10.1016/0550-3213(77)90206-1 (https://doi.org/10.101
6%2F0550-3213%2877%2990206-1). ISSN 0550-3213 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/055
0-3213).
Montonen, C.; Olive, D. (1977). "Magnetic monopoles as gauge particles?" (https://cds.cern.
ch/record/422232/files/CM-P00061677.pdf) (PDF). Physics Letters B. 72 (1): 117–120.
Bibcode:1977PhLB...72..117M (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1977PhLB...72..117M).
doi:10.1016/0370-2693(77)90076-4 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0370-2693%2877%299007
6-4). ISSN 0370-2693 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0370-2693).
Witten, E.; Olive, D. (1978). "Supersymmetry algebras that include topological charges".
Physics Letters B. 78 (1): 97–101. Bibcode:1978PhLB...78...97W (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.
edu/abs/1978PhLB...78...97W). doi:10.1016/0370-2693(78)90357-X (https://doi.org/10.101
6%2F0370-2693%2878%2990357-X). ISSN 0370-2693 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/03
70-2693).
See also
GSO projection
Montonen–Olive duality
M-theory
Supersymmetry
String theory

References

Citations
1. ICTP 1997.
2. MGP.
3. Debretts 2012.
4. Swansea University 2012.
5. The Times 2012a.
6. The Times 2012b.
7. Goddard et al. 1977.
8. Witten & Olive 1978.
9. SGF&D 2004.

Sources
Edward Corrigan and Peter Goddard (16 September 2020). "David Ian Olive. 16 April 1937
—7 November 2012" (https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsbm.2020.0024). Biographical Memoirs of
Fellows of the Royal Society. 69: 467–498. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2020.0024 (https://doi.org/10.
1098%2Frsbm.2020.0024). S2CID 221714243 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:22
1714243).
Swansea University (2012). "Professor David Olive Obituary" (http://www.swansea.ac.uk/sci
ence/news/professordavidoliveobituary/#d.en.149196). swansea.ac.uk. Swansea: Swansea
University. Archived (https://archive.today/20170219130501/http://www.swansea.ac.uk/scien
ce/news/professordavidoliveobituary/%23d.en.149196) from the original on 19 February
2017.
"Prof David Olive, CBE, FRS" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131231000608/http://www.deb
retts.com/people/biographies/browse/o/20708/David%20Ian+OLIVE.aspx). Debretts.
Archived from the original (http://www.debretts.com/people/biographies/browse/o/20708/Dav
id%20Ian+OLIVE.aspx) on 31 December 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
"David Ian Olive Obituary" (https://archive.today/20121123152703/http://announcements.the
times.co.uk/obituaries/timesonline-uk/obituary.aspx?pid=161033971). The Times. Archived
from the original (http://announcements.thetimes.co.uk/obituaries/timesonline-uk/obituary.as
px?pid=161033971) on 23 November 2012. Retrieved 14 November 2012.
"Professor David Olive. The Times. p54. 19 Dec 2012" (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinio
n/obituaries/article3635113.ece).
 International Centre for Theoretical Physics. "Dirac Medallists 1997" (https://www.ictp.it/abou
t-ictp/prizes-awards/the-dirac-medal/the-medallists/dirac-medallists-1997.aspx). ictp.it. ICTP.
Archived (https://archive.today/20170219133017/https://www.ictp.it/about-ictp/prizes-award
s/the-dirac-medal/the-medallists/dirac-medallists-1997.aspx) from the original on 19
February 2017.
"David Ian Olive" (https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=131582).
Mathematics Genealogy Project. Archived (https://archive.today/20170219134012/https://w
ww.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=131582) from the original on 19 February
2017.
"Strings, Gauge Fields and Duality" (http://pyweb.swan.ac.uk/diofest/). pyweb.swan.ac.uk.
Swansea University. 2004. Archived (https://archive.today/20121223100548/http://pyweb.sw
an.ac.uk/diofest/) from the original on 23 December 2012.

External links
"Olive, David Ian" (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/105903). Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/105903 (http
s://doi.org/10.1093%2Fref%3Aodnb%2F105903). (Subscription or UK public library
membership (https://www.oxforddnb.com/help/subscribe#public) required.)
Scientific publications of David Olive (https://inspirehep.net/author/profile/D.I.Olive.1) on
INSPIRE-HEP

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