EDWARD WITTEN

'Edward Witten' (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is one of the world's leading researchers in superstring theory. He made several contributions for theoretical physics and he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990. In 1995, he suggested the existence of M-theory at a conference at the University of Southern California, and used M-theory to explain a number of previously observed dualities, sparking a flurry of new research in string theory called the second superstring revolution. Many physicists consider him to be Einstein's true successor^[1].

Contents

Birth and education

Academic career

Research and achievements

Personal life

Awards and honors

Trivia

References

External links

Birth and education

Edward Witten was born in Baltimore, Maryland ^[2] to a Jewish family, the son of Lorraine W. Witten and Louis Witten, a physicist specializing in gravitation and general relativity. He received his bachelor's degree in history (with a minor in linguistics) from Brandeis University. Witten planned to become a political journalist, and published articles in ''The New Republic'' and ''The Nation''. He worked briefly for George McGovern's presidential campaign. Then, he attended the University of Michigan for one semester as an economics graduate student before dropping out. He then returned to academia, enrolling in applied mathematics at Princeton University before shifting departments and receiving a Ph.D. in physics in 1976 under David Gross, the Nobel laureate in Physics in 2004.

Academic career

After completing his PhD, he worked at Harvard University as a Junior Fellow and at Princeton as a professor. He was a Professor of Physics at Princeton University from 1980 to 1987. He also was briefly at Caltech for two years from 1999 to 2001. He is currently the Charles Simonyi Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Research and achievements

Witten has made several contributions for theoretical physics. Witten's extensive work in the area of theoretical physics has also involved a large number of highly mathematical results. He has been active primarily in quantum field theory and string theory, and in related areas of topology and geometry. His many contributions include a simplified proof of the positive energy theorem involving spinors in general relativity, his work relating supersymmetry and Morse theory, his introduction of topological quantum field theory and his related work on mirror symmetry and supersymmetric gauge theories, and his conjecture of the existence of M-theory.
Witten was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990. He became the first physicist to win the Fields Medal. Sir Michael Atiyah said of Witten, "Although he is definitely a physicist, his command of mathematics is rivaled by few mathematicians... Time and time again he has surprised the mathematical community by his brilliant application of physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems... he has made a profound impact on contemporary mathematics. In his hands physics is once again providing a rich source of inspiration and insight in mathematics." One such example of his impact on pure mathematics is his framework for understanding the Jones polynomial using Chern-Simons theory. This had far reaching implications on low-dimensional topology and led to quantum invariants such as the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants.

Personal life

He is married to Chiara Nappi, who is a professor of physics at Princeton University. His brother, Matt Witten, is a screenwriter and producer for several popular TV series including ''L.A. Law'' and ''House''.
He is sentimentally attached to the Jewish tradition, in which he was raised, but he doesn't take seriously the truth value of religion. Since 1992, he has been on the board of Americans for Peace Now.^[3]

Awards and honors

Witten has been honored with numerous awards, including a MacArthur Grant (1982), a Fields Medal (1990), and the National Medal of Science (2002). Pope Benedict XVI also 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.

Trivia

★ Witten has the highest ''h''-index of any living physicist.

★ Witten was mentioned in a 1999 episode of the cartoon ''Futurama''.

★ Witten was mentioned in the 2002 ''Angel'' episode "Supersymmetry".

References

1. Viewpoints on String Theory
2. [1]
3. Edward Witten for Americans for Peace Now

External links

★ Witten's web page at the Institute

★ Publications on ArXiv

★ Witten theme tree on arxiv.org

★ Futurama episode information

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