“The BEH mechanism operates within the context of gauge theories. Despite the fact that grand unification schemes reach scales comparable to the Planck scale, there was, a priori, no indication that Yang-Mills fields offer any insight into quantum gravity. The only approach to quantum gravity that had some success, in particular in the context of a quantum interpretation of the black hole entropies, are the superstring theory approaches and the possible merging of the five perturbative approaches (Type IIA, IIB, Type I and the two heterotic strings) into an elusive M-theory whose classical limit would be 11-dimensional supergravity.”

—  François Englert

page 19 of [2002, A brief course in spontaneous symmetry breaking ii. modern times: The BEH mechanism, arXiv preprint hep-th/0203097, https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0203097.pdf]

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François Englert4
Belgian theoretical physicist 1932

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