  During the last ten years, intriguing dualities between gauge and string
theory have been found and explored. They provide a novel window on strongly
coupled gauge physics, including QCD-like models. Based on a short historical
review of modern string theory, we shall explain how so-called AdS/CFT
dualities emerged at the end of the 1990s. Some of their concrete implications
and remarkable recent progress are then illustrated for the simplest example,
namely the multicolor limit of \N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions.
We end with a few comments on existing extensions to more realistic models and
applications, in particular to strongly coupled quark gluon plasmas. This text
is meant as a non-technical introduction to gauge/string dualities for
(particle) physicists.
