
On the Work of Edward Witten (1990) [pdf] - montrose
http://bohr.physics.berkeley.edu/reinsch/phys105spr2014/files/Witten_Atiyah.pdf
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a_d
Two years ago, I had the profound honor of having lunch with Prof Witten. He
is also a very kind and generous human being. A small tidbit I learned: He
spends a disproportionate amount of time thinking, and very little time on the
desk with a pen and a paper. His students told me that he likes to work things
out in his head -- which could last for days -- before he would commit things
to paper. I thought that was interesting, although not unexpected for a genius
at his level. If I am not mistaken, he is the most cited theoretical
physicist.

He deserves to be celebrated in popular culture -- like Einstein and Newton.
For me, he is the definition of a "living legend".

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fwdpropaganda
Physicist here. Just wanted to add a little context. Anyone in string theory
will tell you that Witten is possibly the greatest physicist that has ever
lived. Interestingly he's completely unknown to the general public.

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abecedarius
What happens to that evaluation if string theory never has a successful
experimental prediction? Is there some way his work would keep such a high
standing _as physics_ then? No argument that he must be incredibly smart, but
that's not the same.

My layperson's impression is that string theory implies supersymmetry and
supersymmetry doesn't easily comport with the latest accelerator results.

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auntienomen
Witten's work has taught us an enormous amount about the structure of ordinary
quantum field theory. It's important even without strings. Indeed, Witten was
already a dominant influence in the physics community when he began working on
string theory.

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ssivark
Another nugget: one of the leading experimental approaches to search for dark
matter “direct detection” (which would be a Nobel prize worthy discovery) has
its origins in a paper coauthored by Ed Witten:
[http://inspirehep.net/record/207030](http://inspirehep.net/record/207030)

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goldenkey
My memory isn't as good as it used to be. I thought the article was about
Edward Frenkel at first who wrote the fantastic novel Love and Math [1]. It's
about his life growing up in Soviet Russia as a Jewish mathematician. He was
good friends with the famed physicist Murray Gell-Mann who discovered a theory
of hadrons, leading to the quark model we have today [2]. In the novel he
talks about some of the groundbreaking work he has done. But he's mostly known
for his cinema work on the emotional fullness of mathematics and physics. I
would nominate him for a Nobel if I could. But Fields medals are about pure
mathematical achievement, right? So I'm not sure he would qualify.

[1] [http://amzn.to/2HKD3Mc](http://amzn.to/2HKD3Mc) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eightfold_Way_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eightfold_Way_\(physics\))

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auntienomen
Frenkel was tenured at Berkeley in his early 20s, at an age when most people
are still in grad school. His mathematical achievements are substantial. I've
no doubt that he was on the list of candidates for the Fields at some point in
the late 90s & early 2000s.

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HerrMonnezza
Small correction to the submission title: it's "Witten" not "Whitten"

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dang
Whoops! Thanks, fixed.

