String Theory: The Early Years

This article provides some historical background and then reviews developments in string theory over the last twenty-five years or so. Both perturbative and non-perturbative approaches to string theory are surveyed and their impact on how we view quantum gravity is analysed.

We give an elementary introduction to classical and quantum bosonic string theory.

This paper comprises the written version of the lectures on string theory delivered at the 31st British Universities Summer School on Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics which was held in Manchester, England, August 28 - September 12 2001.

We provide a detailed analysis of the problems and prospects of superstring theory c. 1986, anticipating much of the progress of the decades to follow.

This lecture presents a brief overview of the early history of string theory and supersymmetry. It describes how the S-matrix theory program for understanding the strong nuclear force evolved into superstring theory, which is a promising framework for constructing a unified quantum theory of all forces including gravity. The period covered begins with S-matrix theory in the mid 1960s and ends with the widespread acceptance of superstring theory in the mid 1980s. Further detai...

Joel Scherk (1946--1980) was an important early contributor to the development of string theory. Together with various collaborators, he made numerous profound and influential contributions to the subject throughout the decade of the 1970s. On the occasion of a conference at the Ecole Normale Superieure in 2000 that was dedicated to the memory of Joel Scherk I gave a talk entitled "Reminiscences of Collaborations with Joel Scherk". The present article, an expanded version of ...

This is a brief overview on the current status of string theory for non-specialists. The purpose is to give an aspect on the nature of string theory as a unified theory of all interactions including quantum gravity and to discuss future perspectives. Particular emphases are put on the mysteries why string theory contains gravity and why it resolves the ultraviolet problems.

This article contains a short review of the current status of string theory.

The different aspects of superstring phenomenology before and after 1995 are briefly reviewed. (Contribution to the conference SUSY97)

This is a non-technical talk given at the Sixth Marcel Grossman Meeting on General Relativity, Kyoto, Japan in June 1991. Some developments in string theory over the last six years are discussed together with their qualitative implications for issues in quantum gravity.