Andrei Linde

Biography

Born in 1948 in Moscow. He studied at Moscow State University, where he received his doctorate in 1975. He worked at the Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences and then at CERN. In 1990, he emigrated to the United States, where he became a professor at Stanford University. He is known for developing new forms of inflationary scenarios. He is a recipient of many awards, including the Gruber Prize in Cosmology.

Key discoveries

• Development of the theory of cosmic inflation
• in particular
• the chaotic inflation model (1983)
• which describes
• how quantum fluctuations during inflationary expansion generate primordial inhomogeneities for galaxy formation
• the scenario of eternal inflation and the multiverse
• pioneering work on phase transitions in the early Universe.