mathematics

Ruth Gregory

Ruth Gregory is a mathematics 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 Ruth Gregory rather than just read about it. In short: Ruth Ann Watson Gregory is a British mathematician and physicist, currently Head of Department of Physics and Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London. Her fields of specialisation are general relativity and cosmology.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Ruth Ann Watson Gregory is a British mathematician and physicist, currently Head of Department of Physics and Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London. Her fields of specialisation are general relativity and cosmology.

Education Gregory earned her PhD from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1988, writing a thesis on "topological defects in cosmology" supervised by John M. Stewart.

Career Gregory held postdoctoral appointments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Fermi Institute in the University of Chicago, before returning to Cambridge for a five-year research fellowship. She was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Durham in 2005. Gregory held this post until her appointment as Head of Department of Physics and Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London in 2021. She is a visiting fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics where she lectures as part of the PSI's master's programme. She serves as a managing editor of International Journal of Modern Physics D.

Research Her research centres on the intersection of fundamental high energy physics and cosmology. She is best known for the Gregory–Laflamme instability, describing an instability of black strings in higher dimensions.

Awards and honours Gregory was given the 2006 Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics for her contributions to physics at the interface of general relativity and string theory, in particular for her work on the physics of cosmic strings and black holes. In 2011 she received the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award to study Time and Extra Dimensions in Space.

Selected publications Gregory, Ruth; Laflamme, Raymond (1993), "Black strings and p-branes are unstable", Physical Review Letters, 70 (19): 2837–2840, arXiv:hep-th/9301052, Bibcode:1993PhRvL..70.2837G, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.2837, MR 1215408, PMID 10053666, S2CID 118877812. Gregory, Ruth; Laflamme, Raymond (1994), "The instability of charged black strings and p-branes", Nuclear Physics, 428 (1–2): 399–434, arXiv:hep-th/9404071, Bibcode:1994NuPhB.428..399G, doi:10.1016/0550-3213(94)90206-2, MR 1299265, S2CID 118870476. Bowcock, Peter; Charmousis, Christos; Gregory, Ruth (2000), "General brane cosmologies and their global spacetime structure", Classical and Quantum Gravity, 17 (22): 4745–4763, arXiv:hep-th/0007177, Bibcode:2000CQGra..17.4745B, doi:10.1088/0264-9381/17/22/313, MR 1797969, S2CID 17088843. Gregory, Ruth (2000), "Nonsingular global string compactifications", Physical Review Letters, 84 (12): 2564–2567, arXiv:hep-th/9911015, Bibcode:2000PhRvL..84.2564G, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.2564, MR 1746624, PMID 11017270, S2CID 2068529. Gregory, Ruth (2000), "Black string instabilities in anti-de Sitter space", Classical and Quantum Gravity, 17 (18): L125–L131, arXiv:hep-th/0004101, Bibcode:2000CQGra..17L.125G, doi:10.1088/0264-9381/17/18/103, MR 1791092, S2CID 14175513. Gregory, Ruth; Rubakov, Valery A.; Sibiryakov, Sergei M. (2000), "Opening up extra dimensions at ultralarge scales", Physical Review Letters, 84 (26, part 1): 5928–5931, arXiv:hep-th/0002072, Bibcode:2000PhRvL..84.5928G, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5928, MR 1766870, PMID 10991091, S2CID 7058868.

References

External links Professor Ruth Gregory – profile at The Royal Society website.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ruth Gregory

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ruth Gregory claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, 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 Ruth Gregory 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 Ruth Gregory 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 Ruth Gregory

In research: Ruth Gregory appears in mathematics 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 Ruth Gregory 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: Ruth Gregory is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century British mathematicians, 20th-century British women mathematicians, 21st-century British mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ruth Gregory 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 Ruth Gregory in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ruth Gregory 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 Ruth Gregory out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ruth Gregory in simple terms?

Why does Ruth Gregory matter?

Because it connects several mathematics 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 Ruth Gregory?

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 Ruth Gregory.