John Henry Schwarz (String Theory)

If string theory were a religion, then John Henry Schwarz would be the equivalent of St. Paul. At a time when virtually every other physicist abandoned string theory, Schwarz persevered for almost a decade as one of the few who tried to work out the theory’s mathematical details, even though it hurt his career. Eventually, his work led to the first superstring revolution.
Schwarz was one of the physicists who discovered that supersymmetry resolved several of the problems with string theory. Later, Schwarz proposed the idea that the spin-2 particle described by string theory may be the graviton, meaning that string theory could be the long-sought theory to unify quantum physics and general relativity. (See topic 10 for more on these concepts.)
Schwarz worked at Caltech for 12 years — from 1972 to 1984 — as a temporary researcher instead of a full professor. His career prospects were hindered in large part because of his perceived obsession with string theory.
In 1984, Schwarz performed (along with Michael Green) the work showing that string theory was consistent, triggering the first superstring revolution. Without Schwarz’s decade of dedicated work (or obsession), there would have been no foundation in place for superstring theory to build upon throughout the 1980s, when it rose to prominence among particle physicists.