In 1983 JG Russo obtained a fellowship to study physics at the Instituto Balseiro, Bariloche, Argentina, where he obtained the degree (Licenciatura) in Physics (12/1986). He was awarded a SISSA fellowship to follow the PhD programme at SISSA, Trieste, Italy, where he finished his PhD (10/1990) under the supervision of Daniele Amati on Quantum gravity and String theory. As a postdoc at Stanford University, USA, he collaborated with L. Susskind on black hole physics. He continued his research on black holes and string theory first at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and then at CERN, Geneva. In 1998 JG Russo moved to the University of Buenos Aires as a Professor and in 04/2003 joined ICREA as a Research Professor.

Research interests

A major challenge of theoretical physics is unveiling the fundamental laws that govern the universe. The microscopic world, governed by quantum mechanics, is fuzzy, uncertain and involves three forces among elementary particles: electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear. The gravitational force, described by Einstein general relativity, is instead observed at large scales. But this theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics. Superstring theory is presently the best candidate to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics and thus to provide a unifying framework for the four forces of nature.