Stephen Shenker

Stephen Hart Shenker (born 1953) is an American theoretical physicist who works on string theory. He is a professor at Stanford University and former director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His brother Scott Shenker is a computer scientist.

Work
Shenker's contributions to physics include:
 * Basic results on the phase structure of gauge theories (with Eduardo Fradkin)
 * Basic results on two dimensional conformal field theory and its relation to string theory (with Daniel Friedan, Emil Martinec, Zongan Qiu, and others)
 * The nonperturbative formulation of matrix models of low-dimensional string theory, the first nonperturbative definitions of string theory (with Michael R. Douglas)
 * The discovery of distinctively stringy nonperturbative effects in string theory, later understood to be caused by D-branes.  These effects play a major role in string dynamics
 * The discovery of Matrix Theory, the first nonperturbative definition of String/M theory in a physical number of dimensions. Matrix Theory (see Matrix string theory) is an example of a gauge/gravity duality and is now understood to be a special case of the AdS/CFT correspondence (with Tom Banks, Willy Fischler and Leonard Susskind)
 * Basic results on the connection between quantum gravity and quantum chaos (with Douglas Stanford, Juan Maldacena and others)