... understanding of the physics of black holes. In particular, we discuss the ideas from string theory that explain the entropy of black holes froma counting of microstates of the hole, and the related ... FUN-DAMENTAL STRING String theory is a quantum theory of gravity. Thus, black holes should appearin this theory as excited quantum states. An idea of Susskind [24] has provedvery useful in the study of ... that relate Type IIA theory to heterotic string theory, and those that relate these theories to the theory of unorientedstrings. In this article, we do not use the idea of dualities directly,...