Black holes and thermodynamics - The first half century

Understand

Black hole thermodynamics emerged from the classical general relativistic laws of black hole mechanics, summarized by Bardeen-Carter-Hawking, together with the physical insights by Bekenstein about black hole entropy and the semi-classical derivation by Hawking of black hole evaporation.

• The black hole entropy law inspired the formulation of the holographic principle by 't Hooft and Susskind, which is famously realized in the gauge/gravity correspondence by Maldacena, Gubser-Klebanov-Polaykov and Witten within string theory.
• Moreover, the microscopic derivation of black hole entropy, pioneered by Strominger-Vafa within string theory, often serves as a consistency check for putative theories of quantum gravity.
• In this book chapter we review these developments over five decades, starting in the 1960ies.