Frank Yang at Stony Brook and the Beginning of Supergravity

Abstract

Frank Yang came to Stony Brook in 1966 as director of a newly created Institute for Theoretical Physics. He stayed for 32 years. (It was aptly renamed the C. N. Yang Institute upon his retirement from Stony Brook in 1998). The author was his deputy director for a decade, and succeeded him as director, to be succeeded in turn by George Sterman who is still at present the director. In this contribution in honor of “the sage of Stony Brook” (Dyson’s words), I will tell some reminiscences and anecdotes of how life was under Frank’s directorship. When the Yang Institute celebrated its 50th anniversary, Frank recalled in a brief video from China that for him the two most memorable events during his time at Stony Brook were the discovery of Supergravity and the dictionary between physics and mathematics which he established in discussions with Jim Simons. The latter can be found on the net [1]. I shall recall the beginning of Supergravity at Stony Brook, as a tribute to the discoverer of nonabelian gauge theories.