Joe Polchinski in Santa Barbara
Joseph Polchinski is a famous physicist working on string theory. He is a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. Among his very many contributions to theoretical physics, D-branes remain to be the most important discovery.
Joe Polchinski is also the author of two volumes of the famous textbook called simply "String Theory" although he calls it "Joe's Big Book of String".
