Edward Witten

Edward Witten
Born	(1951-08-26) August 26, 1951 Baltimore, Maryland
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Brandeis University, Princeton University
Known for	string theory, M-theory, quantum field theory
Spouse	Chiara Nappi
Awards	Fields Medal (1990) Henri Poincaré Prize (2006) Crafoord Prize (2008)
Scientific career
Fields	Theoretical physicist
Institutions	Institute for Advanced Study
Doctoral advisor	David Gross
Doctoral students	Cumrun Vafa, Eva Silverstein, Shamit Kachru, Sergei Gukov

Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist with a focus on mathematical physics. He is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is a leading researcher in superstring theory and winner of the highest honor in mathematics, the Fields Medal.

Birth and education

Witten was born in Baltimore, Maryland to a Jewish family, the son of Lorraine W. Witten and Louis Witten, a theoretical 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 Wisconsin–Madison 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 2004 Nobel laureate in Physics.

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.

Witten has the highest h-index (110) of any living physicist.

Research and achievements

Witten has made extensive contributions to theoretical physics, in work that has spawned 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 related work on mirror symmetry and supersymmetric gauge theories and his conjecture of the existence of M-theory.

Witten was awarded the Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union in 1990, becoming the first physicist to win the prize. Sir Michael Atiyah said of Witten, "Although he is definitely a physicist, his command of mathematics is rivaled by few mathematicians... Time and again he has surprised the mathematical community by a 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.

Witten is widely known as “the most brilliant physicist of his generation”, and "one of the world's greatest living physicists, perhaps even Einstein's successor". In 1995, he suggested the existence of M-theory at a conference at the University of Southern California and used it to explain a number of previously observed dualities sparking a flurry of new research in string theory called the second superstring revolution. He is currently working on the possible relations between gauge theories and Geometric Langlands program.

Personal life

Witten is married to Chiara Nappi, a professor of physics at Princeton University. They have two daughters, Ilana and Daniela, and one son, Raphael (Rafi). His brother, Matt Witten, is a screenwriter and producer for several popular TV series including L.A. Law and House.

Awards and honors

Witten has been honored with numerous awards including a MacArthur Grant (1982), a Fields Medal (1990), the National Medal of Science (2002), Pythagoras Award[1] (Croton, 2005), the Henri Poincaré Prize (2006) and the Crafoord Prize (2008). 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 2000, he was awarded the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics.

See also

• Gromov–Witten invariant
• Hořava–Witten domain wall
• Seiberg–Witten gauge theory
• Seiberg–Witten invariant
• Vafa–Witten theorem
• Weinberg–Witten theorem
• Wess–Zumino–Witten model
• Witten index

External links

• Faculty webpage
• Publications on ArXiv
• Witten theme tree on arxiv.org
• Futurama episode information
• Edward Witten reference in the web comic Abstruse Goose
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Edward Witten", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
• Edward Witten at the Mathematics Genealogy Project