Benchmarks on the brane
  Branes now occupy center stage in theoretical physics as microscopic components of M-theory, as the higher-dimensional progenitors of black holes and as entire universes in their own right. Their history has been a checkered one, however. Here we list some of the milestones, starting with Dirac's 1962 paper. Asim Barut was an early pioneer. 
M.J. Duff