astronomy

Hirosi Ooguri

Hirosi Ooguri is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hirosi Ooguri rather than just read about it. In short: Hirosi Ooguri (spelled as Hiroshi Oguri in government documents) (大栗博司; born 1962) is a theoretical physicist working on quantum field theory, quantum gravity, superstring theory, and their interfaces with mathematics. He is Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and the Founding Director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology.

Key takeaways

Hirosi Ooguri belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hirosi Ooguri to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hirosi Ooguri from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hirosi Ooguri (spelled as Hiroshi Oguri in government documents) (大栗博司; born 1962) is a theoretical physicist working on quantum field theory, quantum gravity, superstring theory, and their interfaces with mathematics. He is Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and the Founding Director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology. He is also the director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics at the University of Tokyo and is the chair of the board of trustees of the Aspen Center for Physics in Colorado. In July 2025, he was appointed chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) at Caltech. Ooguri aims at discovering mathematical structures in these theories and exploiting them to invent new theoretical tools to solve fundamental questions in physics. In particular, he developed the topological string theory to compute Feynman diagrams in superstring theory and used it to study mysterious quantum mechanical properties of black holes. He also made fundamental contributions to conformal field theories in two dimensions, D-branes in Calabi-Yau manifolds, the AdS/CFT correspondence, and properties of supersymmetric gauge theories and their relations to superstring theory.

Career Completing his bachelor's degree in 1984 and his master's degree in 1986, both at Kyoto University, Ooguri became a tenured faculty member at the University of Tokyo in 1986. He was a member the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and was appointed an assistant professor at the University of Chicago before receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1989. He was an associate professor at Kyoto University in 1990–1994 and returned to the United States as a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1994. He moved to California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2000, where he is the inaugural holder of the Fred Kavli Chair. At Caltech, Ooguri served as the deputy chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, equivalent of a vice dean of physical sciences. He led the establishment of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics and was appointed its founding director in 2014. Ooguri also helped establish the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan in 2007. After serving as its principal investigator for 11 years, he became the director in 2018. Ooguri has been a member of the Aspen Center for Physics since 2003. After serving as the scientific secretary a trustee, and the president, he was elected the chair of the board of trustees of the center in 2021. Ooguri is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an investigator of the Simons Foundation. He has received the Eisenbud Prize from the American Mathematical Society, the Humboldt Research Award and the Hamburg Prize in Germany, and the Nishina Memorial Prize in Japan. Ooguri's popular science books have sold over a quarter million copies in Japan, and one of them was awarded the Kodansha Prize for Science Books. He also supervised a science movie, which was selected for the Best Educational Production Award from the International Planetarium Society.

Awards Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics, awarded by the American Mathematical Society (2008). This was the inaugural prize, which he shared with Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa Takagi Lecturer, the only named lecture series of the Mathematical Society of Japan (2008) Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2009) Nishina Memorial Prize from the Nishina Foundation (2009) Simons Investigator Award (2012) Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, (2012) Kodansha Prize for Science books (2013) Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 2016) Chunichi Cultural Prize (2016) Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics (2018) Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (2019) Asian Scientist 100, Asian Scientist, (2019)

Other activities Ooguri has organized many international conferences and workshops, including Strings `98 in Santa Barbara, Strings 2003 in Kyoto, and Strings 2018 in Okinawa. Ooguri has been on the editorial boards of Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, the Journal of High Energy Physics (1997–2006), Nuclear Physics B (1998–2013), Physical Review D (2006–2009) and Communications in Mathematical Physics (2014–2015). He has also served on various boards and advisory committees.

References

External links Official Website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hirosi Ooguri

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hirosi Ooguri claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hirosi Ooguri before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hirosi Ooguri ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hirosi Ooguri

In research: Hirosi Ooguri appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hirosi Ooguri in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hirosi Ooguri is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1962 births, Academic staff of Kyoto University, Aspen Center for Physics people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hirosi Ooguri outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hirosi Ooguri in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hirosi Ooguri means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hirosi Ooguri out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hirosi Ooguri in simple terms?

Why does Hirosi Ooguri matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hirosi Ooguri?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hirosi Ooguri.