Talk:Edward Witten

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should witten be cloned??!! imagine 100 wittens!

Hmmm... 'heralded', 'foremost', 'inspired', 'sparked' seem very colorful words. Could this gung-ho rave-up on an obviously very smart fellow be toned down somewhat? Infradig (andrew)

Clearly yes! I will try my best :-) --Chan-Ho Suh 06:11, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Removing "as the founder of M-theory" from the introductory bits. Two reasons: 1) M-theory is too technical a notion to belong in an introduction. 2) The story of how string theorists learned to think about strings is slightly complicated. Reducing it to "Witten founded it" doesn't do it justice.

I've removed "Witten's work combines deep physical insight with a remarkable command of modern mathematics." and replaced it with "Witten's extensive work in the area of theoretical physics has also involved a large number of highly mathematical results." Anyone reading this page can see he's done a lot of 'deeply insightful physics' and has 'a remarkable command of modern mathematics', as the title says, they are 'peacock' words. Altered the bit about his contributions so it doesn't imply he was the first to prove the Positive Energy Theorem and changed a few words about his low dimensional topology result to remove 'great' and replace it with 'wide ranging'. That seems slightly more neutral. AlphaNumeric 21:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Jewish? 2 can't someone get a better picture? 3 academic studies uncertainty 4 more trivia

[edit] Jewish?

Is he? 85.64.74.117 17:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

he is the incarnation of God. Witten Is God 23:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, he's Jewish. -lethe ^{talk +} 02:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Can you provide a citation?

I do happen to know that he's jewish, but not because I have a newspaper article which says so in my hands. -lethe ^{talk +} 15:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] can't someone get a better picture?

maybe somebody can take an updated picture of him?

[edit] academic studies uncertainty

So he started off in his BA as an historian...when and How did he manage to come into the realm of physics..? This is Not Very clear. --Procrastinating@^talk2me 16:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

This article talks a little about Witten's history: http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/84n3/ivory.html. Apparently he tried many different things before settling on physics.

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[edit] more trivia

I believe he was interviewed for the book The End of Science. It is a popular work that might expose a younger person to his work etc. Casey208.53.88.146 03:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)