Joël Scherk

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Joël Scherk (often cited as Joel Scherk) was a physicist who studied string theory and supergravity^[1]. Together with John H. Schwarz, he figured out that string theory was a theory of quantum gravity in 1974. In 1978, together with Eugène Cremmer and Bernard Julia, Scherk constructed the Lagrangian and supersymmetry transformations for supergravity in eleven dimensions^[2], which is one of the foundations of M-theory.

Scherk was born in 1946^[3]. He died unexpectedly, and in tragic circumstances, at some date between the end of the 1979 supergravity workshop at the State University of New York at Stony Brook on 29 September 1979, and the publication of the workshop proceedings^[4] later in 1979 or in 1980. The workshop proceedings were dedicated to his memory, and stated that he suffered from diabetes, and got stuck somewhere without his insulin, and went into a coma. Another report states that he suffered a breakdown and committed suicide^[5].

The high-energy theory library of the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique at École Normale Supérieure (Paris), is dedicated in his honor. A conference in Paris, on 16 to 20 October 2006, celebrating 30 years of Supergravity^[6], was dedicated to Scherk.

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