Cohl Furey

Cohl Furey, also known as Nichol Furey, is a Canadian mathematical physicist.

Career Furey has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Simon Fraser University (2005), Master's degree from the University of Cambridge (2006) and a Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Waterloo (2015). She was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge's Trinity Hall from 2016 to 2019 and spent a few months at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. Since 2020, she has been at the Humboldt University of Berlin on a Freigeist Fellowship by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Her main interests are division algebras, Clifford algebras, and Jordan algebras, and their relation to particle physics. Her work focuses on finding an underlying mathematical structure to the Standard Model of particle physics. She is most noted for her work on octonions. In her 2018 paper "SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) (× U(1)) as a symmetry of division algebraic ladder operators," according to Quanta Magazine, "she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model symmetry group, SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1), for a single generation of particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units — essentially, because whole numbers are."

Media recognition In 2019, Wired.com listed her in their article "10 Women in Science and Tech Who Should Be Household Names".

Notable publications

C. Furey, "Three generations, two unbroken gauge symmetries, and one eight-dimensional algebra", Phys. Lett. B, 785 (2018) p. 84-89 (See addendum, arXiv version C. Furey, "SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) (× U(1)) as a symmetry of division algebraic ladder operators", Eur. Phys. J. C, 78 5 (2018) 375 C. Furey, "A demonstration that electroweak theory could violate parity automatically (leptonic case)", Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, (2018) C. Furey, "Standard model physics from an algebra?", PhD thesis, University of Waterloo, [arXiv:1611.09182] C. Furey, "Charge quantization from a number operator", Phys. Lett. B, 742 (2015), pp. 195–199 C. Furey, "Generations: Three prints, in colour", JHEP 10 (2014) 046 [arXiv:1405.4601 hep-th] C. Furey, "Towards a unified theory of ideals", Phys. Rev. D 86 (2012) 025024, [arXiv:1002.1497 hep-th] Furey, DeBenedictis, "Wormhole throats in Rm gravity", Class. Quantum Grav. 22 (2005) 313–322, [arXiv:gr-qc/0410088]