Biography

Ted Jacobson earned a BA at Reed College in Physics and Mathematics (1977), and a PhD at the University of Texas, Austin in Physics (1983). After postdoctoral positions at UCSB and Brandeis, he joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1988. He has had numerous research interests, including models of discrete spacetime, quantum gravity, sensitivity of Hawking radiation to short distance physics, analog condensed matter models of Hawking radiation, black hole entropy, constraints on Lorentz symmetry violation in particle physics and gravitation, and force-free plasmas. He is the recipient of a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He holds a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair position at Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. In 2018, he was named a UMD Distinguished University Professor.

Enjoy his October 2020 public lecture on electromagnetic waves, sponsored by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.