John Moffat (physicist)

John Moffat
Moffat in 2007
Born (1932-05-24) 24 May 1932 (age 92)
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
Known forGravitation
Quantum field theory
Variable speed of light
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo
Doctoral advisorFred Hoyle and Abdus Salam

John W. Moffat (born 24 May 1932)[1] is a Canadian physicist. He is currently professor emeritus of physics at the University of Toronto[2] and is also an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a resident affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Moffat is best known for his work on gravity and cosmology, culminating in his nonsymmetric gravitational theory and scalar–tensor–vector gravity (now called MOG), and summarized in his 2008 book for general readers, Reinventing Gravity. His theory explains galactic rotation curves without invoking dark matter. He proposes a variable speed of light approach to cosmological problems. The speed of light c may have been more than 15 orders of magnitude higher during the early moments of the Big Bang. His recent work on inhomogeneous cosmological models purports to explain certain anomalous effects in the CMB data, and to account for the recently discovered acceleration of the expansion of the universe.

Moffat has proposed a new nonlocal variant of quantum field theory, that is finite at all orders and hence[citation needed] dispenses with renormalization. It also generates mass without a Higgs mechanism.

  1. ^ "Birthdays". The Guardian. Guardian News & Media. 11 October 2014. p. 55.
  2. ^ Peter Calamai (27 November 2005). "Einstein's respectful heretic". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012. Retrieved 21 May 2011.