Leigh obtained his B.Sc. degree from the
University of Guelph in 1986, and his Ph.D. from the
University of Texas at Austin in 1991, working with
Joe Polchinski. After postdoctoral positions at
Santa Cruz and
Rutgers, he was a professor at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1996 until his death in 2026. Since 2007, he has been a
Fellow of the
American Physical Society. Leigh discovered, in association with Jin Dai and
Joseph Polchinski, an important class of extended objects in
string theory, the
D-branes. Rob Leigh died on April 18, 2026. ==References==