Lecture for the Fortieth Anniversary of Supergravity

Abstract: In the first part of this lecture, some very basic ideas in supersymmetry and supergravity are presented at a level accessible to readers with modest background in quantum field theory and general relativity. The second part is an outline of a paper of the author and his collaborators on the AdS/CFT correspondence applied to the ABJM gauge theory with $\cal{N} =8$ supersymmetry.