Michael R. Douglas (born November 19, 1961)[1] is an American theoretical physicist, best known for his work in string theory and mathematical physics.

He was promoted to assistant professor in 1990 but spent his first year visiting the École Normale Supérieure and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

He became an associate professor at Rutgers in 1995, and left for a year in 1997–1998 to take up a permanent position at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques.

In 2012, Douglas left Stony Brook University to work for Renaissance Technologies, the famous quantitative hedge fund.

[3] He has a long association with the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, as a Louis Michel Visiting Professor from 2000 to 2008, and as chairman and President of the Friends of IHES from 2013 to 2021.