Friday, May 29, 2015

Edward Witten, the World's Greatest Living Theoretical Physicist

 Source from Wikipedia (Edward_Witten):

Witten has been honored with numerous awards including a MacArthur Grant (1982), the Fields Medal (1990), the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics (2000), the National Medal of Science[18] (2002), Pythagoras Award[19] (2005), the Henri Poincaré Prize (2006), the Crafoord Prize (2008), the Lorentz Medal (2010) the Isaac Newton Medal (2010) and the Fundamental Physics Prize (2012). Since 1999, he has been a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London).[20] Pope Benedict XVI appointed Witten as a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2006). He also appeared in the list of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2004. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

November 13, 2008 From Discover Magazine 

the-man-who-led-the-second-superstring-revolution

Ed Witten has been called “the most brilliant physicist of his generation.” Some, not content with this accolade, have compared him to Isaac Newton. Witten is a deeply original and committed theoretical physicist whose primary field of research is string theory, which proposes a “theory of everything” wherein the building blocks of the universe are curves, or “strings,” formed into loops. He has been one of the field’s foremost proponents and most prolific contributors, once telling an interviewer, “It was very clear that if I didn’t spend my life concentrating on string theory, I would simply be missing my life’s calling.”

Witten’s work has been especially distinguished in its use of advanced mathematics to achieve the kind of unified field theory of the universe that was Einstein’s dream.


November 8, 2010 From Simons Center For Geometry and Physics 
Source: (archives/996)

During the recent opening gala, the SCGP was honored by the visit of the most renowned theoretical physicists. Certainly the most acclaimed one, Edward Witten came from the Institute for Advanced Studies. A recipient of the Fields Medal (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics), Witten has shaped research in theoretical physics in the last twenty years, with a continuous series of insights, that have created a new symbiotic relationship between physics and mathematics. Their leit motif is the tireless pursuit of the true nature of string theory and its mysterious avatar: the “theory of everything” also known as M-theory. After his inaugural lecture, we sat down to chat with Witten, and learn about his past as a journalist and political activist and the future of physics and physicists.

Source from nova/elegant

Many physicists consider Ed Witten to be Einstein's true successor. A mathematical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Witten has been awarded everything from a MacArthur "genius grant" to the Fields Medal, the highest honor in the world of mathematics. His contributions to string theory have been myriad, including the time in 1995 when he gave the then somewhat moribund field a much-needed boost by showing how the five different variations of the theory then competing with one another actually all belonged under one umbrella.

Witten: You have to be open-minded because ideas come from different places. You can think about something in one way for a long time and it seems like the only way to think about it, but it really isn't. Somebody could make a suggestion that really sounds naïve. It might even be naïve, but it could have an important element of the truth in it. And it could be truth that one's overlooking. So it's really hard to state a general rule. If one could say the general rule about where to find inspiration, we would just teach it to our students and then science would be much more straightforward.

You can read more for  edited version of an interview with Edward Witten that appeared in the December 2014 issue of Kavli IPMU News, the news publication of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) by following the link below:

http://www.ams.org

March 04, 2015 From UC San Diego News Center  Source: (preeminent_physicist_edward_witten_to_speak_at_uc_san_diego_march_18)

Witten is the recipient of the 2014 Kyoto Prize—Japan’s highest private award for global achievement—in “Basic Sciences.” He received the award in recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics, and more specifically, for his role in the dramatic evolution of superstring theory.

Witten is a professor at the esteemed Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey—a place where Albert Einstein once worked. For more than three decades, Witten has made landmark contributions to theoretical physics, generating research and discoveries which have led the evolution of superstring theory. He has appeared on TIME magazine’s list of the world’s “100 Most Influential People,” as his work is bringing science closer to the long-sought “theory of everything”—one all-encompassing theoretical framework that can offer an integrated perspective of how our universe is constructed.

His research has also had a profound influence on mathematics. He is the only physicist to win the Fields Medal, the world’s top honor for mathematics. Witten has received numerous other awards including the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize. He is also a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

In April 2015, the World Science Festival will honor Witten’s seminal contributions to the fields of physics and mathematics during their celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

Here is an Interview clip from YouTube of 2014 Kyoto Prize laureate in Basic Sciences winner, Edward Witten:

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