Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American
mathematical
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
and
theoretical physicist
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...
. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of
Natural Sciences
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
in
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
.
Witten is a researcher in
string theory
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...
,
quantum gravity
Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics; it deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the vi ...
,
supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical physics. Witten's work has also significantly impacted pure mathematics.
In 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
by the
International Mathematical Union
The International Mathematical Union (IMU) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of mathematics across the world. It is a member of the International Science Council (ISC) and supports ...
, for his mathematical insights in physics, such as his 1981 proof of the
positive energy theorem
The positive energy theorem (also known as the positive mass theorem) refers to a collection of foundational results in general relativity and differential geometry. Its standard form, broadly speaking, asserts that the gravitational energy of a ...
in
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
, and his interpretation of the Jones invariants of knots as Feynman integrals. He is considered the practical founder of
M-theory
M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. Edward Witten first conjectured the existence of such a theory at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in 1995. Witten's ...
.
[Duff 1998, p. 65]
Early life and education
Witten was born on August 26, 1951, in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
, to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family. He is the son of Lorraine (née Wollach) Witten and
Louis Witten Louis may refer to:
* Louis (coin)
* Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name
* Louis (surname)
* Louis (singer), Serbian singer
* HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy
See also
Derived or associated terms
* Lewis ( ...
, a
theoretical physicist
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...
specializing in
gravitation
In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stron ...
and
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
.
Witten attended the
Park School of Baltimore
The Park School of Baltimore, known as Park, is a private, coeducational, non-sectarian, progressive day school for children in Pre-Kindergarten (age 4) through grade twelve. Park is located in Brooklandville, Maryland, near the city of Baltimo ...
(class of '68), and received his
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
degree with a major in history and minor in linguistics from
Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, pro ...
in 1971.
He had aspirations in journalism and politics and published articles in both ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
'' and ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' in the late 1960s. In 1972 he worked for six months on
George McGovern's presidential campaign.
Witten attended the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
for one semester as an economics graduate student before dropping out. He returned to academia, enrolling in
applied mathematics
Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...
at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
in 1973, then shifting departments and receiving a
PhD in physics in 1976 and completing a dissertation, "Some problems in the short distance analysis of gauge theories", under the supervision of
David Gross
David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. Gr ...
. He held a fellowship at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
(1976–77), visited
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
(1977–78),
was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (1977–1980), and held a
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...
fellowship (1982).
Research
Fields medal work
Witten was awarded the
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
by the
International Mathematical Union
The International Mathematical Union (IMU) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of mathematics across the world. It is a member of the International Science Council (ISC) and supports ...
in 1990.
In a written address to the
ICM,
Michael Atiyah
Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded th ...
said of Witten:
As an example of Witten's work in pure mathematics, Atiyah cites his application of techniques from
quantum field theory
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
to the mathematical subject of
low-dimensional topology
In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot th ...
. In the late 1980s, Witten coined the term ''
topological quantum field theory
In gauge theory and mathematical physics, a topological quantum field theory (or topological field theory or TQFT) is a quantum field theory which computes topological invariants.
Although TQFTs were invented by physicists, they are also of mathe ...
'' for a certain type of physical theory in which the
expectation value
In probability theory, the expected value (also called expectation, expectancy, mathematical expectation, mean, average, or first moment) is a generalization of the weighted average. Informally, the expected value is the arithmetic mean of a l ...
s of observable quantities encode information about the
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
of
spacetime
In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why differen ...
.
In particular, Witten realized that a physical theory now called
Chern–Simons theory could provide a framework for understanding the mathematical theory of
knots
A knot is a fastening in rope or interwoven lines.
Knot may also refer to:
Places
* Knot, Nancowry, a village in India
Archaeology
* Knot of Isis (tyet), symbol of welfare/life.
* Minoan snake goddess figurines#Sacral knot
Arts, entertainme ...
and
3-manifolds. Although Witten's work was based on the mathematically ill-defined notion of a
Feynman path integral and therefore not
mathematically rigorous, mathematicians were able to systematically develop Witten's ideas, leading to the theory of
Reshetikhin–Turaev invariant
In the mathematical field of quantum topology, the Reshetikhin–Turaev invariants (RT-invariants) are a family of quantum invariants of framed links.
Such invariants of framed links also give rise to invariants of 3-manifolds via the Dehn surgery ...
s.
Another result for which Witten was awarded the Fields Medal was his proof in 1981 of the
positive energy theorem
The positive energy theorem (also known as the positive mass theorem) refers to a collection of foundational results in general relativity and differential geometry. Its standard form, broadly speaking, asserts that the gravitational energy of a ...
in
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
. This theorem asserts that (under appropriate assumptions) the total
energy
In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...
of a gravitating system is always positive and can be zero only if the geometry of
spacetime
In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why differen ...
is that of flat
Minkowski space
In mathematical physics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) () is a combination of three-dimensional Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inerti ...
. It establishes Minkowski space as a stable ground state of the
gravitational field
In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influences that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body. Thus, a gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenome ...
. While the original proof of this result due to
Richard Schoen
Richard Melvin Schoen (born October 23, 1950) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential geometry and geometric analysis. He is best known for the resolution of the Yamabe problem in 1984.
Career
Born in Celina, Ohio, and a ...
and
Shing-Tung Yau
Shing-Tung Yau (; ; born April 4, 1949) is a Chinese-American mathematician and the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. In April 2022, Yau announced retirement from Harvard to become Chair Professor of mathem ...
used
variational methods
The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions
and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...
, Witten's proof used ideas from
supergravity theory to simplify the argument.
A third area mentioned in Atiyah's address is Witten's work relating
supersymmetry
In a supersymmetric theory the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical. In theoretical and mathematical physics, any theory with this property has the principle of supersymmetry (SUSY). Dozens of supersymmetric theories e ...
and
Morse theory
In mathematics, specifically in differential topology, Morse theory enables one to analyze the topology of a manifold by studying differentiable functions on that manifold. According to the basic insights of Marston Morse, a typical differentiabl ...
, a branch of mathematics that studies the
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
of
manifolds
In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a Ne ...
using the concept of a
differentiable function
In mathematics, a differentiable function of one real variable is a function whose derivative exists at each point in its domain. In other words, the graph of a differentiable function has a non-vertical tangent line at each interior point in its ...
. Witten's work gave a physical proof of a classical result, the
Morse inequalities, by interpreting the theory in terms of
supersymmetric quantum mechanics
In theoretical physics, supersymmetric quantum mechanics is an area of research where supersymmetry are applied to the simpler setting of plain quantum mechanics, rather than quantum field theory. Supersymmetric quantum mechanics has found ap ...
.
M-theory
By the mid 1990s, physicists working on
string theory
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...
had developed five different consistent versions of the theory. These versions are known as
type I,
type IIA,
type IIB
In theoretical physics, type II string theory is a unified term that includes both type IIA strings and type IIB strings theories. Type II string theory accounts for two of the five consistent superstring theory, superstring theories in ten dimens ...
, and the two flavors of
heterotic string
In string theory, a heterotic string is a closed string (or loop) which is a hybrid ('heterotic') of a superstring and a bosonic string. There are two kinds of heterotic string, the heterotic SO(32) and the heterotic E8 × E8, abbreviat ...
theory (
SO(32)
In mathematics, the orthogonal group in dimension , denoted , is the Group (mathematics), group of isometry, distance-preserving transformations of a Euclidean space of dimension that preserve a fixed point, where the group operation is given by ...
and
E8×E8). The thinking was that of these five candidate theories, only one was the actual correct
theory of everything
A theory of everything (TOE or TOE/ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, unified field theory or master theory is a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all asp ...
, and that theory was the one whose low-energy limit matched the physics observed in our world today.
Speaking at the string theory conference at
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
in 1995, Witten made the surprising suggestion that these five string theories were in fact not distinct theories, but different limits of a single theory, which he called
M-theory
M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. Edward Witten first conjectured the existence of such a theory at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in 1995. Witten's ...
. Witten's proposal was based on the observation that the five string theories can be mapped to one another by certain rules called
dualities and are identified by these dualities. It led to a flurry of work now known as the
second superstring revolution
The history of string theory spans several decades of intense research including two superstring revolutions. Through the combined efforts of many researchers, string theory has developed into a broad and varied subject with connections to quantum ...
.
Other work
Another of Witten's contributions to physics was to the result of gauge/gravity duality. In 1997,
Juan Maldacena
Juan Martín Maldacena (born September 10, 1968) is an Argentine theoretical physicist and the Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has made significant contributions to t ...
formulated a result known as the
AdS/CFT correspondence
In theoretical physics, the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. On one side are anti-de Sitter s ...
, which establishes a relationship between certain
quantum field theories
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles ...
and theories of
quantum gravity
Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics; it deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the vi ...
.
Maldacena's discovery has dominated high-energy theoretical physics for the past 15 years because of its applications to theoretical problems in quantum gravity and quantum field theory. Witten's foundational work following Maldacena's result has shed light on this relationship.
In collaboration with
Nathan Seiberg
Nathan "Nati" Seiberg (; born September 22, 1956) is an Israeli American theoretical physicist who works on quantum field theory and string theory. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United ...
, Witten established several powerful results in quantum field theories. In their paper on string theory and
noncommutative geometry
Noncommutative geometry (NCG) is a branch of mathematics concerned with a geometric approach to noncommutative algebras, and with the construction of ''spaces'' that are locally presented by noncommutative algebras of functions (possibly in some ge ...
, Seiberg and Witten studied certain
noncommutative quantum field theories that arise as limits of string theory. In another well-known paper, they studied aspects of
supersymmetric gauge theory
In theoretical physics, there are many theories with supersymmetry (SUSY) which also have internal gauge symmetries. Supersymmetric gauge theory generalizes this notion.
Gauge theory
A gauge theory is a mathematical framework for analysing gau ...
. The latter paper, combined with Witten's earlier work on topological quantum field theory,
led to developments in the topology of
smooth
Smooth may refer to:
Mathematics
* Smooth function, a function that is infinitely differentiable; used in calculus and topology
* Smooth manifold, a differentiable manifold for which all the transition maps are smooth functions
* Smooth algebrai ...
4-manifolds, in particular the notion of
Seiberg–Witten invariants.
With
Anton Kapustin
Anton Nikolayevich Kapustin (born November 10, 1971, Moscow) is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Earle C. Anthony Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. His interests lie in quantum field th ...
, Witten has made deep mathematical connections between S-duality of gauge theories and the
geometric Langlands correspondence In mathematics, the geometric Langlands correspondence is a reformulation of the Langlands correspondence obtained by replacing the number fields appearing in the original number theoretic version by function fields and applying techniques from a ...
. Partly in collaboration with Seiberg, one of his recent interests include aspects of field theoretical description of topological phases in condensed matter and non-supersymmetric dualities in field theories that, among other things, are of high relevance in condensed matter theory. In 2016, he has also brought tensor models to the relevance of holographic and quantum gravity theories, by using them as a generalization of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model.
Witten has published influential and insightful work in many aspects of quantum field theories and mathematical physics, including the physics and mathematics of anomalies, integrability, dualities, localization, and homologies. Many of his results have deeply influenced areas in theoretical physics (often well beyond the original context of his results), including string theory, quantum gravity and topological condensed matter.
Awards and honors
Witten has been honored with numerous awards including a
MacArthur Grant (1982), the
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
(1990), the Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement
The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...
(1997), the
Nemmers Prize in Mathematics
The Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics is awarded biennially from Northwestern University. It was initially endowed along with a companion prize, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, as part of a $14 million donation from the Nemme ...
(2000), the
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
(2002), Pythagoras Award (2005), the
Henri Poincaré Prize (2006), the
Crafoord Prize
The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord. The Prize is awarded in partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foun ...
(2008), the
Lorentz Medal
Lorentz Medal is a distinction awarded every four years by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was established in 1925 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the doctorate of Hendrik Lorentz. The medal is given for impor ...
(2010) the
Isaac Newton Medal
The Isaac Newton Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics (IOP) accompanied by a prize of £1,000. The award is given to a physicist, regardless of subject area, background or nationality, for outstanding con ...
(2010) and the
Fundamental Physics Prize
The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is one of the Breakthrough Prizes, awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Board. Initially named Fundamental Physics Prize, it was founded in July 2012 by Russia-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture capit ...
(2012). Since 1999, he has been a Foreign Member of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
(London), and in March 2016 was elected an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
.
Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign ...
appointed Witten as a member of the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences ( it, Pontificia accademia delle scienze, la, Pontificia Academia Scientiarum) is a Academy of sciences, scientific academy of the Vatican City, established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the ...
(2006). He also appeared in the list of ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine's
100 most influential people
''Time'' 100 (often stylized as ''TIME'' 100) is an annual listicle of the 100 most influential people in the world, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, po ...
of 2004. In 2012 he became a fellow of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
. Witten was elected as a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 1984, a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
in 1988, and a member of the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
in 1993. In May 2022 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Sciences from the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
In an informal poll at a 1990 cosmology conference, Witten received the largest number of mentions as "the smartest living physicist".
Personal life
Witten has been married to
Chiara Nappi, a professor of physics at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, since 1979. They have two daughters and a son. Their daughter
Ilana B. Witten is a neuroscientist at Princeton University,
and daughter
Daniela Witten is a biostatistician at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
.
Witten sits on the board of directors of
Americans for Peace Now
Americans for Peace Now (APN) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States whose stated aim is to help achieve a comprehensive political resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Founded in 1981 as the sister organization to ...
and on the advisory council of
J Street
J Street ( he, ג'יי סטריט) is a nonprofit liberal advocacy group based in the United States whose stated aim is to promote American leadership to end the Arab–Israeli and Israeli–Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatica ...
. He supports the
two-state solution
The two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict envisions an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan River. The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and negotia ...
and advocates a boycott of Israeli institutions and economic activity beyond its 1967 borders, though not of Israel itself.
"For an Economic Boycott and Political Nonrecognition of the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories"
''NYRB'', October 2016.
Selected publications
* ''Some Problems in the Short Distance Analysis of Gauge Theories''. Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, 1976. ( Dissertation.)
* Roman Jackiw
Roman Wladimir Jackiw (; born 8 November 1939) is a theoretical physicist and Dirac Medallist. Born in Lubliniec, Poland in 1939 to a Ukrainian family, the family later moved to Austria and Germany before settling in New York City when Jackiw w ...
, David Gross
David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. Gr ...
, Sam B. Treiman, Edward Witten, Bruno Zumino
Bruno Zumino (28 April 1923 − 21 June 2014) was an Italian theoretical physicist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained his DSc degree from the University of Rome in 1945.
He was renowned for his rigorous p ...
. ''Current Algebra and Anomalies: A Set of Lecture Notes and Papers''. World Scientific, 1985.
* Green, M., John H. Schwarz
John Henry Schwarz (; born November 22, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist. Along with Yoichiro Nambu, Holger Bech Nielsen, Joël Scherk, Gabriele Veneziano, Michael Green, and Leonard Susskind, he is regarded as one of the founders of s ...
, and E. Witten. ''Superstring Theory. Vol. 1, Introduction''. Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. .
* Green, M., John H. Schwarz, and E. Witten. ''Superstring Theory. Vol. 2, Loop Amplitudes, Anomalies and Phenomenology''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. .
* ''Quantum fields and strings: a course for mathematicians''. Vols. 1, 2. Material from the Special Year on Quantum Field Theory held at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1996–1997. Edited by Pierre Deligne
Pierre René, Viscount Deligne (; born 3 October 1944) is a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading to a complete proof in 1973. He is the winner of the 2013 Abel Prize, 2008 Wolf Prize, 1988 Crafoord Pr ...
, Pavel Etingof, Daniel S. Freed, Lisa C. Jeffrey, David Kazhdan, John W. Morgan, David R. Morrison and Edward Witten. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI; Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, NJ, 1999. Vol. 1: xxii+723 pp.; Vol. 2: pp. i–xxiv and 727–1501. , 81–06 (81T30 81Txx).
References
External links
Faculty webpage
Publications on ArXiv
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A Physicist's Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality, Interview with Nathalie Wolchover in ''Quanta Magazine'', November 28, 2017
{{DEFAULTSORT:Witten, Edward
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