Ed Witten has been described by various publications as ‘a genius’s genius’, ‘the Einstein of his time’, and even ‘the Darth Vader of physics’. Time magazine ventured as far as to call him “the most brilliant physicist in the world. Perhaps the most brilliant physicist who has ever lived.” Online lists perennially herald him as ‘the smartest person alive’. Some in the physics community view Witten as the proverbial ‘chosen one’, destined to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity into a so called ‘theory of everything’, while others paint him as an anti-hero who has misled a generation of physicists down the vapid rabbit hole of string theory. This article will explore the extraordinary life of the fascinating and complex figure that is Ed Witten.
Who Is Ed Witten?
Witten is a tall, angular man, who despite being in his seventies, still has an air of teenage awkwardness about him. His prominent jawline looks chiselled from granite, as it carries a persistent five-o’clock shadow. His silver-white hair is wild, yet ordered, receding back from a high brow. Behind unassuming glasses, his hazel-eyed gaze doesn’t just peer at you, but through you, as if he were sifting through unseen dimensions. He is every bit the quintessential-looking professor, preoccupied with abstract thoughts.
Witten has a gentle, yet fast-paced, alto voice. His words are economical and flawless, like he is reading from an autocue. He has an idiosyncratic speech pattern. He talks in bursts. Then after every dozen or so words pauses. Almost as if he were giving the listener a chance to catch up with his fast-paced mind.
At Witten’s core lies a remarkable gentleness, matched only by an equally endearing humility. Yet, behind this modest demeanor is arguably the greatest scientific mind of our time. Witten is a theoretical physicist, and not just a run-of-the-mill one (if you can ever call a theoretical physicist such a thing). He currently serves as the professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. While Witten hasn’t quite reached the household name stardom of physicists like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, or Galileo Galilei, he is highly respected within the physics community. He is most famous for his pioneering work on string theory that attempts to explain the very nature of reality itself.
For the uninitiated, string theory strives to resolve a gaping, supernova-sized gap in physics where quantum mechanics and general relativity clash. Now, quantum mechanics accurately describes the delightfully quirky behaviour of particles, such as atoms and molecules, on the smallest of scales, while Einstein’s theory of relativity succinctly describes the behaviour of objects, such as majestic galaxies and stars, on the largest of scales. However, these theories have a fatal flaw—failing to describe extreme conditions, such as those present during the early Universe or inside black holes. Stop press: a new theory of the Universe is required. This new theory would merge the frameworks of both quantum mechanics and general relativity into a theory called quantum gravity. The leading candidate for quantum gravity is, in many physicists’ opinion, string theory.
String theory fundamentally uproots our entire notion of reality, creating an absurd Escheresque world where nothing is as it seems. According to string theory, our Universe doesn’t consist of point-like elementary particles but rather incomprehensibly tiny pieces of string that wriggle about in ten or eleven dimensions. These dimensions are supposedly curled up on such an incredibly small scale that we don’t perceive them directly. The way these pieces of string vibrate corresponds to the different particles.
The Early Life of Witten
Edward Witten entered the world on 26 August 1951, in the charm city of Baltimore, Maryland. He is the son of Lorraine Witten, a high school teacher who majored in biology at university, and Louis Witten, an esteemed theoretical physicist in his own right, who specialised in gravitation and general relativity.
Having a prominent theoretical physicist father, it’s very tempting to gloss over the first two decades of Ed Witten’s life and assume that his path to theoretical physics prominence was proverbially written in the stars. Yet, Witten’s trajectory into the realm of physics was anything but direct. He adopted new hobbies like they were going out of fashion and flippantly dropped interests in a heartbeat. In fact, Witten actively avoided physics in his late teen era. It was almost like a form of teenage rebellion, as if he and physics were two identically polarised magnets, intent on steering clear of each other during these awkward years.
Witten’s earliest brush with science occurred at the tender age of four. His gravitational physicist father Louis explains, “I would talk to Ed about science the way I would talk with adults.” From ages six through ten, Witten became utterly spellbound by astronomy. This obsession was fuelled by the excitement and uncertainty of the dawn of the space race. Upon turning ten, Witten was gifted a three-inch-reflector telescope, which he used to marvel at various astronomical delights; his favourite being the rings of Saturn. Witten’s preoccupation with the starry heavens above inspired him to strive to become an astronomer. However, he feared that by the time he was an adult, such a profession would require him to live in space—something that sounded far too dangerous for the young and timid Witten.
At the age of ten, under the guidance of his close aunt, Ethel Klavens, Witten learnt the card game bridge. Merely weeks later, he embarked on a voyage to Israel to visit his family. On this journey, he won the ship’s bridge tournament. This was an extraordinary feat, as although bridge is a relatively simple game to learn, mastering its strategic and bidding elements requires significant time and effort. Like chess, proficiency is not achieved instantly.
Upon turning eleven, Witten’s father presented him with an assortment of advanced maths books, thereby introducing him to the imposing world of calculus—a field typically reserved for those in their late teens. As is the case with everything Witten does, he became positively engrossed by the topic. Witten’s parents, perhaps not expecting him to become so fixated, eventually decided to wean him off calculus. They were reluctant to immerse him into too complex maths too soon—a common conundrum for the parents of child prodigies. When looking back on this decision, Witten remains uncertain whether his parents’ choice was the right one. Regardless, Witten’s brief dalliance with advanced maths meant that the maths he would be exposed to for much of his formal secondary education would no longer be novel or challenging. As a result, his interest in the field stagnated.
At the age of 12, Witten engaged in a spate of writing long, drawn out letters to the Baltimore Sun Newspaper. The recurring theme of these letters was his opposition to the Vietnam War. The Baltimore Sun published a large number of Witten’s musings, seemingly unaware of his young age.
While Witten’s precociousness outside of school was nothing short of remarkable, his performance within its walls better foreshadowed his future as an intellectual titan.
Witten skipped grades at school with the effortlessness of a stone skipping across water and was always well ahead of his teachers intellectually. Witten’s aunt, Ethel Klavens, has explained “The public schools didn’t know what to do with him. They skipped him from the fifth to the seventh grade.” Witten jumped from school to school in northern Baltimore, from Baltimore Hebrew School to Wellwood Elementary School to Sudbrook Junior High, and finally to Park School—where he would remain for the rest of his secondary education.
Witten arrived at Park School as a stereotypical bookish student. He was gangly, sported dark, thick-rimmed glasses and was both physically and socially awkward. Furthermore, he was one of those students who seemed to always be constantly sniffling, carrying a different allergy for each day of the week.
Witten’s arrival at Park School was a pivotal point in his origin story. Being younger, smarter, and seemingly more awkward than everyone else, he could have been an easy target for bullies. In one of the parallel universes predicted by string theory, Witten gets tormented by bullies, deflated of self-confidence, and never embarks on an academic career. However, in a major victory for this Universe (and physics itself), this didn’t happen. Rather than being ostracised at Park, Witten was accepted by his fellow students and lauded for his intellectual prowess.
Witten’s fellow student, Richard Kravitz, who went on to become a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine, recalls Witten’s time at Park, “He was two years younger than anyone else and at least 2,000 years smarter than anybody else.”
This sentiment is echoed by one of Witten’s closest friends at the school, Peter Baida, “I suppose it’s common that kids in any high school sit around talking about who the smartest person in the class is. But we used to sit around—when Edward wasn’t there—and talk about how he was the smartest person in the world.”
Park School rejigged its regular curriculum to cater for Witten’s intellect. This included hiring a professor from the local Johns Hopkins University to teach him maths. Although Witten nonchalantly excelled in maths and physics, he was a well-rounded student that was equally competent in virtually every subject he tried his hand at, including history, current world affairs, literature, writing, and politics. The history teacher at Park, Brooks Larkin, recalls her time teaching Witten, “When he warmed up to a political subject, he could totally dominate a conversation in my class. I would say he has a very strong personality behind a quiet exterior.”
As is the case with many academic wunderkinds, Witten’s lone Achilles heel at school was physical education. The school’s baseball coach, Kenneth Greif, had some harsh advice for Witten, “I advised him not to concentrate on baseball. Because I was the baseball coach too, and I was concerned. He wasn’t the best athlete….So I put him way in the outfield. I didn’t want the ball to hit him in the head.”
Despite being athletically challenged, Witten was more motivated than any other student to be on the team and excel. Witten’s aunt, Ethel Klavens, explains “He always wanted to be on the team and he was always the last one to be picked.” I mention this brief anecdote, not as it pertains to Witten’s sporting ability but rather as it pertains to his determination. The hallmark of a great thinker is one who stubbornly refuses to let adversity and difficult problems defeat them. Witten possesses this trait by the bucket load.
Despite undertaking an unorthodox schooling regimen, Witten was spoken of extremely highly by his teachers and fellow students alike. Sure, he was naturally a genius. But more importantly, he is remembered for being moral, kind, humble, and teeming with integrity. Witten was well set for his next phase in life—university.
Witten The University Student
Being a polymath, it’s understandable that Witten didn’t find his single academic niche straight out of high school. Having said this, I don’t think Witten, nor anyone close to him, could have predicted the university course merry-go-round that would ensue.
Witten commenced his tertiary education at Brandeis College, Boston, with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in history and minoring in linguistics. Curiously, Witten specifically chose to major in history despite the fact that linguistics was his favourite subject at the time. When a senior Witten was asked why he chose to pursue history, he responded, “Well, sometimes the choices made by young people are inscrutable.” Unsurprisingly, Witten remained unchallenged by his undergraduate course; however, he dutifully plodded through it with the goal of becoming a political journalist. While at Brandeis, a principled Witten wrote several articles for political journals, including the Nation and the New Republic. In the autumn of 1971, Witten graduated from Brandeis as a history major.
Fresh from becoming a history graduate, Witten re-evaluated his life’s goals and decided to go all in on economics. He viewed economics as a subject that directly engaged with the human condition and contemporary struggles. He enrolled at the University of Michigan as a graduate student; however, after a lacklustre one semester, he dropped out.
Being a person with strong morals, and a passion for fighting against injustice, Witten focused his attention back onto politics. Rather than reverting to his political journalism aspirations, he pivoted to a more grassroots level—helping Senator George McGovern in his 1972 run for US president. Witten was particularly enamoured with McGovern’s anti-war platform.
Witten spent six months working as a low-level aide to McGovern. Due to Witten’s subordinate status in the political pecking order, it’s highly unlikely that he and McGovern interacted in any meaningful way during this period. Several decades after Witten’s stint as a political aide, McGovern was asked what it was like having the world’s smartest person working on his campaign. Unsurprisingly, McGovern didn’t remember Witten, yet he quipped, “Well, he was smart enough to back McGovern in ’72, and I judge everybody by that criteria.” Witten ultimately quit his brief dalliance with politics, citing the fact that politics demanded qualities that he did not have—primarily common sense.
One can only empathise with Witten at this stage of his life. He was clearly brilliant, yet unchallenged. The education system simply isn’t designed for those in the 0.000001% like Witten. History was out, linguistics was out, economics was out, and politics was now out too, so what next? He was running out of subjects to pursue. Witten’s friends and family grew increasingly concerned about his future—and whether he would flip indefinitely between new careers, like a puck being hit back and forth on a frictionless surface.
It’s very easy to imagine a wide-eyed, quixotic, 21-year-old Witten striving to create a utilitarian difference in the world. However, possessing a political conscience and a deep knowledge of moral and political philosophy often isn’t enough to instigate a noticeable difference on a global scale. Indeed, there is a distinction between what a person emotionally yearns to do and what they intellectually should do to gain fulfilment. Perhaps Witten became disillusioned and realised this because at this point, something changed. Witten had the epiphany that maths and theoretical physics were the areas in which he was most supremely talented, and that he would therefore “only be satisfied with a career in those fields.”
Witten borrowed a collection of mathematical textbooks from his sister, who was a math’s student. Flipping through them, he knew he had found his calling. In 1973, Witten was accepted into the prestigious Princeton University to major in applied mathematics. However, after just six months, he did what everyone feared—he quit again.
Witten remained at Princeton, applying to the university’s physics department, where he was accepted. Thankfully, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, this time he didn’t quit. Witten has explained why he was (eventually) drawn to physics, “I was about 21 years old when I made the decision between mathematics and theoretical physics, and I made this decision based on very limited knowledge about either field. My choice was theoretical physics, in large part because I was fascinated by the elementary particles.”
Now, one doesn’t just simply get accepted into physics at Princeton on a whim. Witten demonstrated extraordinary mathematical ability in his brief stint while studying maths at Princeton and drew the eyes of the right faculty members who pulled a few strings (not of the subatomic variety). Princeton allowed Witten to transfer into their Physics PhD program, despite the fact that he lacked a formal undergraduate physics background. Although rare, elite institutions like Princeton occasionally make exceptions for truly exceptional individuals who demonstrate undeniable talent and potential in a field, even without the standard prerequisites. Witten is perhaps the most famous example of this.
Witten explains, “Of course, I learnt as much as I could before I started graduate school in physics in September of 1973. But, nevertheless, the first year was very difficult work to catch up. By the end of the year I caught up, not in the sense that I knew everything, but in the sense that I knew as much as my fellow graduate students did.” Witten clearly had the ability to rapidly absorb new topics, almost like he was a computer downloading new subject material into his brain. Witten’s friend, Peter Baida, has emphasised this fact, “He was so smart he could devour whole fields in a short time.”
Witten has described that at the age of 21, he “learned general relativity in a very exciting period of about ten days from the book of Steven Weinberg.” The book that Witten references here is ‘Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity’. This book is so dense that you could easily add just a few more complex equations to it and watch on as it collapsed into a black hole. It has the unique perspective of approaching general relativity from a particle physics viewpoint. In order to even pick up this book, one needs a solid background in classical mechanics, electromagnetism, special relativity, and quantum field theory, as well as strong muscles (it’s on the lean side of 700 pages). In essence, it’s aimed at PhD students and above. It’s remarkable that a 21-year-old, self-taught, newcomer to physics would think of reading such a book, let alone consume it in its entirety in just ten days.
During Witten’s early physics graduate years, he served as the teaching assistant and grader for Anthony Zee’s quantum field theory course. Zee had just embarked on a career as an assistant physics professor, and as he didn’t know any different, assumed that Witten was just your run-of-the-mill graduate student. Zee explains, “Ed produced lucidly written solutions to the homework problems I assigned, to the extent that the next year I went to the chairman to ask, ‘What is wrong with the TA (teaching assistant) I have this year? He is not half as good as the guy last year!’”
Witten commenced his physics PhD under the supervision of David Gross. At this time, Gross was arguably the greatest physicist in the world. He was fresh off discovering asymptotic freedom with his student, Frank Wilczek (roughly three decades later, Gross would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery). Asymptotic freedom is the remarkably counterintuitive phenomenon that describes the fact that when quarks—the basic building blocks of matter—get closer together, the force between them actually decreases.
It was serendipitous that Witten had such an eminent physicist as Gross serving as his supervisor. It’s easy to imagine the graduate student Witten quickly surpassing the knowledge of most physics supervisors. As it was, Witten soon caught up to Gross’s level. This is emphasised in this anecdote by ‘Max Raker’, “There are many stories you hear around Princeton about how frustrating Witten was to mentor. David (Gross) would come up with a problem that he thought would take anybody a few weeks to solve and require a ton of calculations, which a person sort of needs to go through to be educated as a theoretical physicist. Witten would instead come back in a day or 2 with a one page proof that required no calculations and was based on some deep symmetry or other hidden but mathematically sophisticated technique. You can talk to some professors who were at Princeton at the time and as a school it has produced its share of talent (including Terence Tao) but I don’t think the faculty has ever been blown away like they were with Witten. He must have had one of the quickest journeys from ‘I want to be a physicist’ to ‘I am the most important person in the field’ in history.”
In 1976, Witten completed his PhD titled ‘Some problems in the short distance analysis of gauge theories’. His PhD was about how the fundamental forces described by gauge theories—the mathematical frameworks for forces—behave at small distances or high energies. His PhD built upon the asymptotic freedom work that Gross had laid the foundation for. Despite weaving through disparate fields and beginning his physics tertiary education just three years prior, Witten received his physics PhD at the tender age of 25.
In 1977, Gross wrote what has now become a famous one line recommendation letter for Witten’s application to the Harvard School of Fellows. “He’s smarter than me and probably smarter than you, so accept him.” In a surprise to absolutely no one, Witten was accepted.
Witten’s Career
The Junior Fellow position at Harvard University’s Society of Fellows is one of the most prestigious early-career academic appointments in the world. Fewer than a dozen fellows are selected annually from a global pool exceeding one thousand. The society’s honour board reads like a who’s who of the intellectual elite. Fellows are provided with three years of salary, no formal duties, and generous academic resources to enable them to devote themselves full time to their voyage of discovery.
When Witten arrived at Harvard, he encountered the familiar face of Chiara Nappi. This amiable, outgoing Italian physicist had glowing skin, prominent circular-lensed glasses, and dark springy coils of hair just long enough to obscure her ears. The pair had first met in 1975, at a physics summer school in the French Alps. Their serendipitous reunion at Harvard quickly blossomed into a romance. Nappi and Witten would ultimately wed in 1979, and have their first child while at Harvard.
Throughout Witten’s stint as a Junior Fellow, he was determined to understand quark confinement: the enduring mystery of why quarks can never be found in isolation. For some reason, the strong force acts like a subatomic gatekeeper, trapping quarks and preventing them from ever escaping their group. In an attempt to comprehend this phenomenon, Witten ventured into the realm of abstract mathematics. He hoped that possessing a broader toolkit would give him the necessary advantage to tackle quark confinement and other problems in physics. Witten explains, “We gradually learned that answering some of these (physics) questions required mathematical techniques that we weren’t familiar with that gradually brought us closer to the interests of modern mathematicians.” Although quark confinement would ultimately become Witten’s white whale, his detour into abstract mathematics would prove to be extremely fruitful over the long term.
In 1980, Witten returned to Princeton, like a boomerang that somehow circles back to its point of origin. He was appointed as a fully-fledged professor at the age of 28—one of the youngest to be bestowed with that position. Witten had spent his entire life jumping from interest to interest, school to school, and course to course. He had now finally found his niche and would spend virtually his entire career in and around Princeton, with the stable figure of Chiara Nappi by his side, immersed head-deep in physics and maths.
Although Witten was content that he tessellated neatly into the Princeton academic landscape, the rest of the world didn’t realise this. Consequently, as whispers of Witten’s genius spread through physics circles, elite universities worldwide began fiercely competing for him. This was exemplified in 1981, when the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques—a South Parisian institute devoted to fundamental research in mathematics and theoretical physics—wrote to physicist Sidney Coleman seeking an appraisal of Witten. Coleman responded with the following letter.
“Dear Professor Kuiper: This is in response to your letter of September 1, requesting my evaluation of Edward Witten. I know Ed Witten well. He was for four years a member of our group and I have followed his work closely. I think he is clearly the best physicist to enter my field since Gerald ‘t Hooft. Ed’s work is extraordinary in its originality, is clarity, its depth of insight, and its quality. Rarely has anyone published so much that is so good so young. The only criticism I can make of his career to date is that the main body of his work is rather remote from experiment; there is no Witten effect to detect or Witten sum-rule to verify. However, I suspect there will be soon; Ed did some nice work on heavy neutrinos in grand unified theories last year, and I think he will periodically return to phenomenological topics. In addition to all these virtues, Ed is a marvellous lecturer and a very pleasant person, a joy to be with and to talk physics with. I believe that the preceding paragraphs satisfy your request. Now, let me give you a further opinion, which was not requested, but which I feel is relevant. The judgements I have expressed are not mine alone, but the near universal opinions of the high-energy theory community. Ed Witten is inundated in job offers. Bures is a very nice place, but you have about as much chance of getting Ed for your staff as you have of bringing Einstein back from the dead. I have written this letter because of my friendship with and respect for Jurg Frohlich but I have wasted my time writing it and you have wasted your time requesting it of me. If we wasted less time on such futile exercises, we might have a better chance of doing something of merit. With great sincerity, Sidney Coleman.”
Witten was renowned for juggling several different fiendishly complex problems simultaneously. At this stage of his life, one such problem pertained to a newly evolving theory called supersymmetry, which proposed that every known fundamental particle (like the electron or quark) has a hidden ‘super-partner’ particle (like the selectron or squark). Witten realised that supersymmetry was a big deal, as it had the potential to solve major problems in physics, like dark matter and the unification of nature’s forces. Witten became positively obsessed in understanding the nature of the vacuum state in supersymmetry. It was like that endlessly portrayed trope in movies in which the professor becomes fixated on a single problem to the neglect of everything else around them. In the summer of 1981, Witten was lounging about in a swimming pool in Aspen, Colorado when he had a wonderful eureka moment, reminiscent of Archimedes. He recalled a lecture on Morse theory that the Hungarian-American mathematician Raoul Bott had delivered two years earlier. Morse theory is a deeply abstract mathematical concept that helps one comprehend the shape of a space by studying the hills, valleys, and saddles of smooth functions defined on it. Witten ingeniously linked Morse theory to his problem in understanding the nature of the vacuum state in supersymmetry. In 1982, Witten formalised his thinking and published a paper titled ‘Supersymmetry and Morse Theory.’ This paper made global waves in the realms of both pure mathematics and theoretical physics. Witten describes this paper as “Perhaps my first paper that was really memorable and influential.”
While deeply immersed in supersymmetry, Witten was also grappling with the positive energy theorem in general relativity. At its essence, this problem raised the possibility that gravity could harbour negative energy, meaning that the Universe itself might be fundamentally unstable and prone to spontaneous collapse. In a stunningly simply and elegant proof, Witten showed that gravity itself, or anything creating gravity (like matter), always has a positive total mass-energy. Furthermore, he established that the only thing with zero mass-energy is completely empty, flat space. This breakthrough by Witten provided the much needed reassurance to physicists that the fabric of space-time is stitched with resilience.
Witten was renowned for his profound grasp of all branches of physics. He could engage an expert in their own niche field, and with just a few probing questions, completely overturn their foundational assumptions. Researchers who had dedicated years to a single topic often found their perspective transformed after a mere five-minute conversation with him.
During the early 1980s, string theory wasn’t being taken seriously by physicists. Sure, there were a handful of physicists doggedly pursuing it, yet the general topic itself was still considered fringe science. Witten himself foresaw two major flaws with string theory that made him reluctant to get too immersed in the field. Witten’s first criticism was that its framework was so vast that, even if it were a correct theory, it would still take at least 100 years to understand. Fast forward to 2025 and this prophetic assessment still rings true.
Witten’s second critique of string theory was more technical. He pointed out that the laws of nature are not mirror-symmetric: in other words, they distinguish between left-handed and right-handed spinning particles. String theory at the time fell at this hurdle—it couldn’t do this; it treated left and right spinning particles identically. This fatal flaw meant that it was impossible for string theory to describe our real universe. Witten explained this problem to the handful of researchers working on string theory, who nodded and listened intently. In the summer of 1984, two of these researchers, Michael Green and John Schwarz, made a breakthrough—they performed some mathematical wizardry known as anomaly cancellation and hey presto, resolved Witten’s criticism. This was a watershed moment where string theory went from ‘interesting but flawed’ to ‘holy cow, this might work!’ The Green and Schwarz breakthrough became known as the first string theory revolution. A sizeable portion of the physics community began to take string theory seriously. This included Witten—he was now all in on string theory.
The original string theory was deeply flawed. It predicted tachyons—particles that always travel faster than light, failed to include all the matter particles, and required space-time to have 26 dimensions. Various physicists chipped away at this framework to develop an updated model of string theory, aptly known as ‘superstring theory’. This new theory removed the tachyon problem, incorporated all the matter particles, and reduced the necessary number of dimensions down to 10—a vast improvement on the original 26.
Up until 1984, Witten was primarily known for his groundbreaking work on quantum field theory, supersymmetry, and supergravity. Yet the first string theory revolution redirected his focus. Building on Green and Schwarz’s work, Witten teamed up with Alvarez-Gaume and demonstrated that anomalies could only be cancelled in specific dimensions—like 10. This was precisely the number of dimensions in which superstring theory operated. Witten continued to cement himself on the frontline of string theory research. In fact, throughout 1984, he wrote a record 19 papers on string theory, singlehandedly transforming the superstring landscape.
In 1985, there was enormous buzz and anticipation when it was announced that Witten was going to give a lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. This wasn’t going to be your standard lecture of course material aimed at undergraduate students. Rather, it was a lecture to the world’s foremost physicists on Witten’s groundbreaking work on superstring theory. One of the top brass present was renowned mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson, who was some 20 years Witten’s senior. Freeman recalls, “In the spring of 1985, Ed Witten, one of the most brilliant of young physicists at Princeton University, announced that he would give a talk. …it was clear that this talk would be an extraordinary occasion. …our seminar room was packed with people, some old and famous, some young, all eager with expectations. Witten spoke very fast for an hour and a half without stopping. It was a dazzling display of virtuosity. It was also, as Witten remarked quietly at the end, a new theory of the universe. …When Witten came to the end… The listeners sat silent. There were no questions. Not one of us was brave enough to stand up and reveal the depths of our ignorance. …I describe this scene because it gives a picture of what it means to explore the universe at the highest level of abstraction. Ed Witten is taking a big chance. He has moved so far into abstraction that few even of his friends know what he is talking about. …He did not invent superstrings. …Ed Witten’s role is to build superstrings into a mathematical structure which reflects to an impressive extent the observed structure of particles and fields in the universe. After they heard him speak, many members of his audience went back to their desks and did the homework they should have done before, reading his papers and learning his language. The next time he talks, we shall understand him better. Next time, we shall perhaps be brave enough to ask questions.”
Witten continued to balance his impressively broad range of research with teaching in Princeton’s physics department. It was here that Witten’s students bestowed upon him the affectionate moniker ‘the Martian’. This was due to his superhuman intellect and unique approach to maths and physics that appeared so advanced that it felt like he must be from another planet.
In 1987, Witten became a permanent faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). Although the IAS is technically a distinct entity from Princeton University, it’s better to think of both institutions as separate circles on a Venn diagram, with a generous overlapping section. Walking through the IAS’s picturesque 800 acre grounds is like taking a step out of the humdrum of regular society and onto a movie set, where every tree is artfully sculptured and each individual blade of grass is trimmed to millimetre-level precision. At the heart of this property rises Fuld Hall: an ornate, multi-storey building whose veneer resembles a checkerboard grid of brick and light. Just as religions have their various temples of worship, Fuld Hall is surely that for academia. Not only for its architecture but for the work that’s done within its quiet walls.
The IAS has been described as a “haven for the exceptionally gifted.” It’s dedicated to insulating researchers from the menial work of academia, allowing them to be fully immersed in their research. There have been 34 Nobel Laureates and 62 Fields Medallists affiliated with the prestigious institute. When you enter the grounds, you are quite literally walking in the footsteps of Albert Einstein, Kurt Godel, Robert Oppenheimer, and John von Neumann, just to name a few. The IAS hosts around 30 permanent faculty members, including Witten, and 200 visiting scholars. Witten has spoken glowingly about the IAS, “It’s a very nice atmosphere to work. There are very few responsibilities. All one has to do is one’s research… Both the senior faculty and the young researchers who spend a couple years there are among the best in the field usually, so there’s lots of stimulation.” Following Witten’s arrival at the IAS, the institute blossomed into the global epicentre for string theory research.
By the late 1980s, Witten had developed a strong working relationship with the British-Lebanese mathematician Michael Atiyah. One of the more notable problems that Atiyah presented to Witten related to the Jones polynomial—a mathematical tool invented by New Zealander Vaughan Jones to distinguish different types of knots. Atiyah was dissatisfied with the current explanations for the Jones polynomial because none of them provided a fully intrinsic explanation of the knot’s symmetry. In all cases, they involved breaking the knot down into simpler pieces, studying those pieces individually, and then reassembling the information. The fact that this process worked felt like hocus pocus to Atiyah. It lacked a direct, geometric, or natural explanation rooted in the knot’s whole structure.
In what can only be described as a dazzling leap of insight, Witten stepped back from the problem and thought of the knot as the path followed by a charged particle in a world of three dimensional space-time (two dimensions of space and one of time). This novel approach uprooted the standard perspective of viewing the knot in our own familiar world of four dimensional space-time. Witten’s approach yielded a natural explanation of the Jones polynomial. Witten describes his breakthrough here as “probably one of the things I’ve done that’s had the biggest impact in math and also a decent amount of impact in physics.”
In 1990, Witten became the first—and still only—physicist to be awarded the Fields Medal. This honour is often hailed as the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, yet in reality, it’s rarer still. Bestowed just once every four years to four mathematicians worldwide, its scarcity underlines its prestige. To frame Witten’s Fields Medal win in sporting terms, it’s like Michael Phelps, the most decorated swimmer in history, turning his attention to the track and winning the 100-metre sprint at the Olympics. Sure, maths and physics have overlapping elements—just like swimming and running—yet they are distinct fields when you reach their highest echelons.
Witten was awarded the Fields Medal for his entire mathematical oeuvre, including his work on supersymmetry and Morse theory, elegant proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity, and his natural explanation of the Jones polynomial. Michael Atiyah, a distinguished Fields Medallist in his own right, has described Witten’s foray into mathematics, “Although he is definitely a physicist (as his list of publications clearly shows) his command of mathematics is rivalled by few mathematicians, and his ability to interpret physical ideas in mathematical form is quite unique. Time and again he has surprised the mathematical community by his brilliant application of physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems.”
In 1990, Cambridge University hosted an international conference titled ‘Cosmology and Particle Physics’. Those attending included Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, and Alan Guth, as well as an assortment of other eminent cosmologists and particle physicists. At this conference, a poll was conducted asking the attendees who they believed was the smartest living physicist. The name that received the most votes—a Mr. Ed Witten. The physicist who received the second-most votes was Steven Weinberg: the author of the book on general relativity that Witten had digested in all but ten days as a 21-year-old newcomer to physics. It’s one thing for Joe Schmo to declare someone as smart. But for a gathering that may well have held the planet’s highest concentration of intellect to single out one physicist as supreme among them—that verdict carries profound weight.
In 1994, Witten returned to a problem that had been festering at the back of his mind for nigh on two decades: quark confinement. He teamed up with Israeli-American physicist Nathan Seiberg, and building on years of interim discoveries, produced the Seiberg-Witten theory. While this theory didn’t solve quark confinement in the real world directly, it provided a working proof of concept for how quark confinement could occur.
The Seiberg-Witten theory would ultimately have a profound and transformative impact across theoretical physics and mathematics, far exceeding its original goal of solely understanding quark confinement. This is emphasised in this quote by British mathematician Richard Borcherds, “He used some sort of weird, black magic from physics to come up with these new mathematical invariants of four manifolds that mathematicians hadn’t noticed and that wiped out a lot of hard mathematical problems. That paper on the Seiberg-Witten invariants—it was a huge advancement in mathematics and it was just a tiny, incidental spin-off from something else he was working on…He’s repeated it multiple times. He came up with other Witten invariants of three manifolds and he’s done Seiberg-Witten invariants for four manifolds. And he’s not even working in that area—he’s working on physics. And these are incidental minor spin-offs. Without trying, he’s wiping out these major problems in mathematics.”
During the mid-1990s, the novelty of string theory had started to wear off. The hopes that superstrings would produce a ‘theory of everything’ that would simply fall out of the sky into one lucky physicist’s lap hadn’t eventuated. There were now five different, yet consistent, versions of string theory. The vexing problem was that physicists didn’t know which of these five theories was correct. String theory had officially reached a stalemate. Enter Ed Witten.
It was announced that Witten would address the mystery of the five string theory variants at the University of Southern California string theory conference of ‘95. Witten was like a far-eastern oracle and the physics community his devout followers, waiting with bated breath on what Witten would declare. At the conference, Witten dropped a bombshell—there were not really five disparate variants of string theory, these five versions were actually different limiting cases of the one overarching theory known as M-theory.
In order for Witten to bring the five versions of string theory into a workable equation describing M-theory, he needed to perform some mathematical wizardry. This included adding an additional dimension for space, thereby increasing the total number of string theory dimensions to 11. M-theory incorporated a number of other delightful surprises. For example, the world of strings also supposedly contained objects that resembled surfaces known as membranes. With sufficient energy, these membranes could grow to vast sizes, approaching that of an entire universe. Witten speculated that our Universe could even be sitting on a membrane at this very moment.
As Witten left it undefined, there was fervent speculation on what the ‘M’ in M-theory could stand for. Various people have speculated that it may represent membrane, matrix, mystery, or magic. Some have even suggested, tongue in cheek, that the M could stand for an upside down ‘W’ representing the first letter of Witten’s surname—although it’s laughable that a forever humble Witten would indulge in such self-referential praise. Others have derided the theory, suggesting that the ‘M’ might stand for murky. Regardless of what the ‘M’ represents, Witten’s M-theory had kicked off the second superstring revolution. Consequently, for the next few years there was a period of rapid discovery in string theory.
In his seminal 1997 paper, Argentine physicist Juan Maldacena discovered the AdS/CFT correspondence, which provided a powerful ‘dictionary’ that revolutionised our understanding of quantum gravity, black holes, and fundamental physics. Piggybacking on Maldacena’s paper, Witten realised that he could now make headway in understanding his white whale of quark confinement. Witten managed to calculate the force between quarks in a simplified world with similar equations, enabling him to concretely understand this modified version of quark confinement.
From the turn of the millennium onwards, Witten made major breakthroughs in fields such as quantum gravity, topology, and gauge theory. However, Witten’s magnum opus—at least in the public eye—has continued to be string theory, where he has remained the world’s most prolific contributor in the field. Juan Maldacena has emphasised this point, “Most other people have made one or two such contributions. Ed has made 10 or 15.”
Witten Today
Witten has now spent almost four decades stationed in the cushy confines of the Institute for Advanced Study. Within his IAS office, there is a collision of two worlds: the curated order of sentimentality against the dynamic chaos of intellect. The office walls display the precise geometry of his grandchildren’s paintings, while an attentive battalion of family photographs stands neatly marshalled facing his desk. However, if it wasn’t for the order of his family’s touch, one would easily think that an earthquake had struck the premises. His wooden bookcase is overburdened with dense theoretical texts, their spines jostling precariously this way and that. Witten’s desk—his office centrepiece—is flooded with a messy torrent of research papers enveloping his laptop and cascading onto the ground.
Physicist Brian Greene has shared a tale from an anonymous physicist who, for what was surely one humbling summer, had an adjoining wall with Witten’s office, “He describes the unsettling juxtaposition of laboriously struggling with complex string theory calculations at his desk, while hearing the incessant rhythmic patter of Witten’s keyboard, as paper after groundbreaking paper poured forth directly from mind to computer file.” Greene continues with this point, “It’s as if he was just sort of sitting there and the ideas were sufficiently formed that he didn’t even have to write anything out. He could go right from brain to finished paper. And my friend was like, you sit there and you’re like, what am I doing? Why am I in this field?”
Witten’s thought process is unique. He never does calculations, except in his mind. When grappling with a difficult equation, he stares out the window and attempts to solve it in his head. For Witten, computers, pencils, and pieces of paper are needless, other than being a vehicle to deliver his inner machinations to the outside world. Even Witten realises that he is rare in this regard, “I have a tendency, more than most other physicists, to try to figure out everything all at once, before I publish. And even to try to figure out everything in my head, without pencil and paper.”
As of 2025, Witten has arguably the highest h-index of any living physicist, estimated at 190-200+. For context, the h-index is a metric designed to measure both the productivity and citation impact of a researcher’s published work. The index has its flaws, yet most physicists would probably agree that Witten’s foundational and highly influential papers, featuring a staggering 190,000 citations, have rightly earned him top place.
Witten has never won a Nobel Prize, which has led some to claim that his work is so abstract that it doesn’t make contact with reality. However, this is not the case. Witten has introduced new ways of applying quantum field theory to pure mathematics, leading to breakthroughs in knot theory, 3D and 4D manifolds, and the invention of new invariants. While this may sound esoteric, these tools have proven pivotal in areas like cryptography, quantum computing, and condensed matter physics. Witten’s work in topological quantum field theory has also influenced topological phases of matter, such as topological insulators and superconductors. These are two of the leading candidates for robust and scalable quantum computers. Even Witten and his colleagues’ string theory research has been fruitful. For example, the concept of mirror symmetry was discovered by string theorist and has now opened up new ideas in geometry and topology. Furthermore, countless researchers have built upon Witten’s highly cited work to create their own concrete breakthroughs.
Another unfair critique of Witten is that he has led a generation of the world’s greatest physicists down the cul-de-sac of string theory. While string theory has a variety of pros and cons, it’s still considered by a large number of theoretical physicists in the field to be the leading candidate to weave quantum mechanics and general relativity into a successful theory of quantum gravity. Its first strength is that it naturally incorporates gravity alongside the other fundamental forces—an area where quantum field theory struggles. Second, it provides a consistent theory for describing gravity at a quantum level—something that plagues most other approaches. Third, its equations are highly symmetric, with deep mathematical structures, such as dualities, Calabi–Yau manifolds, and modular invariance, which have led to deep insights in physics and maths. Fourth, it provides a natural mechanism for particle variety—different vibrational modes of strings correspond to the different particles. Fifth, it predicts the existence of gauge groups—the mathematical framework for forces—which can, in principle, accommodate the standard model. Sixth, the discovery of AdS/CFT duality suggests a deep connection between gravity and quantum field theories, supporting the notion that string theory captures some fundamental truths. Seventh, there are no ultraviolet divergences in string theory: meaning that it avoids the pesky infinities that plague gravity in other quantum approaches. This gives string theory an advantage over ordinary quantum field theory.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Things aren’t all rainbows and lollipops in the world of string theory. First, and perhaps most concerning, is that no experimental evidence has confirmed predictions that are unique to string theory. Having said this, string theory does predict gravity in a retroactive sense. Second, supersymmetry, which many string theory variants rely on, hasn’t been observed at the Large Hadron Collider. It’s important to note, however, that while supersymmetry hasn’t been detected, there are no theoretical grounds to suggest that it must exist at the energies we can probe at present. Third, string theory allows for 10^500, or even more, vacuum states. This means it’s difficult to pinpoint which version, if any, describes our Universe, making the theory potentially unfalsifiable in practice. Fourth, it requires extra dimensions that we cannot directly observe. These last two points can be countered by saying that if our reality does feature counterintuitive quirks—including a multiverse and extra dimensions—then string theory is simply reflecting that reality. Fifth, it predicts string-like behaviour to be observable around the Planck scale, meaning that it’s not testable with current technology. However, in my eyes, this is not necessarily an issue with string theory itself but rather an issue with technology. The history of science is full of theories that were untestable until technology caught up, such as the existence of atoms, black holes, gravitational waves, and the Higgs boson. Witten himself echoes this point, “String theory is twenty-first century physics that fell by chance into the twentieth century.”
Witten continues to pursue string theory because it’s the most promising theory of quantum gravity. The influence he wields over others entering the field doesn’t stem from his authority but rather the persuasive power of his ideas. Those who pursue string theory research are highly intelligent, freethinking individuals. The majority of shade thrown on string theory in the public arena comes from science communicators who have been disillusioned by the lack of experimental progress. However, those who partake in the nitty gritty of string theory research still view the field as highly promising. As Joseph Conlon has written in his book, ‘Why String Theory’, “Scepticism about string theory tends to diminish as technical knowledge about the subject increases.”
Although Witten veered away from studying politics during the 1970s, he never abandoned the topic entirely. In fact, one of the things he yearns for most is peace in the Middle East. He currently sits on the board of directors of a left-wing, non-profit group called Americans for Peace Now. The stated aim of this group is to achieve a comprehensive political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Witten also serves on the advisory council of J Street—a liberal, non-profit Zionist advocacy group that seeks a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine situation.
Witten is the nucleus of his family’s constellation of exceptional talent. His two younger brothers, Jesse and Matthew, are a lawyer and television writer respectively, while his sister, Celia, is a physician who also has a doctorate in maths. Witten’s older daughter, Ilana, is an acclaimed professor of neurobiology, his youngest daughter, Daniela, is an esteemed professor in biostatistics, and his son, Rafael, is a successful software engineering manager at Amazon. Witten’s mother, Lorraine, passed away in 1987, after majoring in biology and becoming a teacher, while his father, Louis, is 104 years old at the time of writing this article.
Witten’s wife, Chiara Nappi, is a distinguished professor of physics at Princeton University in her own right. She points out that for all of Witten’s genius, he has a single chink in his armour, “A little decision can be a big deal for Ed. Figuring out what is the best exercise bike—that is an impossible task for him.” Witten’s decision making process is reminiscent of a variant of the Buridan’s donkey paradox in philosophy. A donkey is placed precisely midway between two equally enticing stacks of hay. As the donkey is perfectly logical, it cannot make any distinction between the two piles, so it starves to death.
Ed Witten has lived a remarkable life. He has evolved from a precocious youngster to a restless polymath adrift in history, politics, and economics, to finally the nucleus of modern theoretical physics. He has forged profound bridges between physics and pure mathematics, which have not only advanced science but expanded the very toolkit of human thought. Witten remains immersed in research to this day, so the final chapters of his story are still being written.
Quotes About Witten
Here are some quotations, by Witten’s peers, that I couldn’t include in my main article.
Chiara Nappi is a professor of physics at Princeton University and researcher in string theory, mathematical physics, and particle physics. She is also Witten’s wife:
“I think Ed comes as close as you can get to being a genius. But what I think Ed really is is an accident. And accidents like Ed don’t happen so easily.”
“It’s like with Ed you have a field which is completely illuminated, totally lit up, so he just has to look around and figure out the connections. For most other people it’s dark, or mostly dark, and you go with a flashlight until you find something that makes a connection with what you have seen before. But it comes natural to Ed to be able to make a connection. And this is an advantage.”
John Schwarz is the Harold Brown professor of theoretical physics at Caltech. He is also one of the founders of string theory:
“Ed is unique. The kind of person who comes along once a century.”
“I would say he’s the most influential theoretical physicist or mathematician in the world. And I think this has been the consensus among theoretical physicists—and most mathematicians—for a long time.”
“Witten is both deep and fast: After thinking through the ideas, he can compose an essentially error-free 100-page manuscript, often describing breakthrough original research, on his computer in a day.”
“In 1987, Michael Green and I co-authored a monograph entitled ‘Superstring Theory’ with Witten. We were thrilled that Witten agreed to join us, since we knew that his contributions would greatly improve the final product. This work, consisting of more than 1,000 pages packed with equations, was completed in nine months. For Green and me this required dedicating 100-hour workweeks to the project. Witten, on the other hand, was able to do his share while completing several major research projects at the same time.”
Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and known for his work on string theory.
“Back in the 1990s, I was at the Institute for Advanced Study and we had an idea. I had a particular idea of something—I wanted to prove that the fabric of space could rip. And Ed is at the Institute for Advanced Study, and I told him about this idea and thought it was exciting. I was working with a couple of other people—Paul Aspinwall and Dave Morrison—and Ed started to work on his own version. He didn’t take anything from us. He just went in a completely different direction, but yet converged on exactly the same question. And it was among the most exciting times that I’ve had in physics because we knew he was closing in on it. We were closing in on it. We knew that he’s a million times smarter than we are. So we had to work a million times harder and faster to try to get there and not be completely scooped. And basically at the same time, late in the fall, I guess of 1992, it was, within days, came to the same conclusion from completely different approaches. And so we were right there, head to head and it was an incredibly exciting time. He’s one of those figures whose intellect, it’s just hard to fathom.… It was one of those great achievements that I will always remember, but for Edward, it was just another day at the office.”
“Everything I’ve ever worked on, if I trace its intellectual roots, I find they end at Witten’s feet.”
Joseph Polchinski was a theoretical physicist and string theorist, as well as professor of physics at the University of California.
“We all think we’re very smart. He’s (Witten) so much smarter than the rest of us.”
“One final visitor was Edward Witten, a postdoc at Harvard. Witten asked me probing questions about Mandelstam’s program. This was startling to me, first because he was the first person I’d met who understood Mandelstam’s unconventional and technical approach, and second because he understood it better than I did after years of study. I would learn that this was a common reaction to Witten.”
“In Feynman’s Nobel speech, he tells the story of poor Slotnick, whose just finished Ph.D. dissertation Feynman had reproduced, and more, in a single night. Not surprisingly, Slotnick never wrote another paper. And stories had it that Feynman affected others the same way. I have earlier mentioned that first meeting with Witten, which was a little bit like Slotnick’s meeting with Feynman. But I don’t think that Edward has ever shown the highly competitive streak of Feynman; instead, he is competing with history. But each new paper from him gave me the joy of reading, and the question, ‘why am I needed?’”
“I had recently seen the movie Amadeus, which (a bit inaccurately) described Salieri’s torment at being unable to match Mozart’s genius. So I empathized with Salieri. I also put a picture of Witten on the back of my office door, to desensitize myself for when we met.”
Nathan Seiberg is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He specialises in quantum field theory and string theory and collaborated with Witten on the Seiberg-Witten theory:
“The main strength is that he (Witten) is powerful in everything. Both in math—the most sophisticated math—and physics. In physics one needs physical intuition. And he has remarkable physics intuition as well as complete control over the math that is needed. And in that respect I think he’s unique.”
“I think in perspective of a hundred years or three hundred years, his name will stay. It will not be forgotten–his contributions are really lasting–contributions which will stay there.”
Michio Kaku is the professor of physics at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Centre.
“I do believe there really is a category for a genius who is a supernova—a supernova that lights up the entire scientific landscape and that is Ed Witten…. I think he is as close as you are going to get to a living Albert Einstein today.”
“Edward Witten…dominates the world of theoretical physics. Witten is currently the ‘leader of the pack’, the most brilliant high-energy physicist, who sets trends in the physics community the way Picasso would set trends in the art world. Hundreds of physicists follow his work religiously to get a glimmer of his path-breaking ideas.”
Ramamurti Shankar is the Josiah Willard Gibbs professor of physics at Yale University:
“One day Ed Witten said to me, ‘I just learnt a new way to find exact S-matrices in two dimensions invented by Zamolodchikov and I want to extend the ideas to supersymmetric models. You are the S-matrix expert aren’t you? Why don’t we work together?’ I was delighted. All my years of training in Berkeley gave a tremendous advantage over Ed–for an entire week.”
Michael Atiyah was a mathematician and professor at Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He was also a Fields medallist:
“I attended a meeting, and there was this young chap with the older guys. We started talking, and after a few minutes I realized that the younger guy was much smarter than the old guys. He understood all the mathematics I was talking about, so I started paying attention to him. That was Witten. And I’ve kept in touch with him ever since.”
“In 2001, he (Witten) invited me to Caltech, where he was a visiting professor. I felt like a graduate student again. Every morning I would walk into the department, I’d go to see Witten, and we’d talk for an hour or so. He’d give me my homework. I’d go away and spend the next 23 hours trying to catch up. Meanwhile, he’d go off and do half a dozen other things. We had a very intense collaboration. It was an incredible experience because it was like working with a brilliant supervisor. I mean, he knew all the answers before I got them. If we ever argued, he was right and I was wrong. It was embarrassing!”
Dror Bar-Natan is a mathematician and professor at the University of Toronto:
“He (Witten) is able to make even very complicated things appear simple. The problem is that often you will not see that because he’s turning the hyper-complicated into merely complicated.”
“He is so much more talented, there is just no other way of saying it. The guy is smart. The guy is extremely productive. If you try to imitate his brilliance, you will fail….If you try to imitate his productivity, you will be disappointed.”
Edward Frenkel is a professor of mathematics at the University of California:
“We wrote this long paper in 2007, and we collaborated for about a year. I have known him before, and we talked before, and I’ve seen him since, and we talked, but it’s very different to just meet somebody at conferences and have a conversation, as opposed to actually working on a project together. He’s very, very serious, very focused. This is one thing which I have to say, I was really struck by this. He has had this unique vision of the subject. He was able to connect different things, especially find connections between quantum physics and mathematics. Almost unparalleled. I don’t think anyone comes close, in some sense, in the last, you know, 50 years to him, in terms of finding, just consistently, time after time, breaking ground, new ground. He would take some idea in physics, and then find an interpretation of it in mathematics, and then say, distil it, present it in mathematical terms, and tell mathematicians, this should be like that, you know? Kind of like, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4… = -1/12. And mathematicians would be like, no way. And then it would pan out, and mathematicians would then, like a whole industry would be created of groups of mathematicians trying to prove his conjectures and his ideas. And he would always be proven right.”
Richard Borcherds is a professor of Mathematics at the University of California and a Fields medallist:
“I’ve met him (Witten) and he is simply terrifying.”
“He is just so much more productive than me. He produces this endless stream of papers, each of which is 50 or 100 pages long. Many of them have incredible new ideas in them.”
Peter Woit is a mathematician and senior lecturer at Columbia University.
“When I was a graduate student at Princeton, one day I was leaving the library perhaps thirty feet or so behind Witten. The library was underneath a large plaza separating the mathematics and physics buildings, and he went up the stairs to the plaza ahead of me, disappearing from view. When I reached the plaza he was nowhere to be seen, and it is quite a bit more than thirty feet to the nearest building entrance. While presumably he was just moving a lot faster than I was, it crossed my mind at the time that a consistent explanation for everything was that Witten was an extraterrestrial being from a superior race who, since he thought no one was watching, had teleported back to his office.”
“I think he’s a truly remarkable figure. I had the pleasure of meeting him first when he was a post doc and I mean he’s just a completely amazing mathematician and physicist. You know, he’s quite a bit smarter than just about any of the rest of us and also more hardworking and it’s kind of a frightening combination to see how much he’s been able to do…I mean, he’s completely revolutionised some areas of mathematics. He’s totally revolutionised the way we understand the relations between mathematics and physics. And his greatest work is stuff that has little or nothing to do with string theory. The very strange thing about him in some sense is that he doesn’t have a Nobel Prize. There’s a very large number of people who are nowhere near as smart as he is and don’t work anywhere near as hard, who have Nobel Prizes. I think he just had the misfortune of coming into the field at a time when things have gotten much, much, much tougher and no matter how smart you were, it was very hard to come up with a new idea that was going to work physically and get you a Nobel Prize. He got a Fields Medal for certain work he did in mathematics and that’s just completely unheard of—for mathematicians to give a Fields Medal to someone outside their field. Before he came around, I don’t think anybody would have thought that was even conceivable.”
Roger Penrose is the Rouse Ball professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is also a Nobel Laureate in Physics:
“There is no question of the extraordinary quality of Witten’s intellectual achievements. Where Witten goes, it does not take long for the rest to follow.”
Cumrun Vafa is a theoretical physicist and the Hollis Professor at Harvard University. He also had Witten serving as his PhD advisor and would later collaborate with him:
“He is not only brilliant, but he is also multifaceted in terms of the impact he has had, not only in physics, but also in mathematics. He’s got a Fields Medal because of his work in mathematics and rightly so. He has used his knowledge of physics in a way which impacted deep ideas in modern mathematics and that’s an example of the power of these ideas in modern high energy physics and string theory, that the applicability of it to, to modern mathematics. He’s quite an exceptional individual. We don’t come across such people a lot in history. So I think, he’s one of the rare figures in the history of the subject. He has had a great impact on a lot of aspects of not just string theory but a lot of different areas in physics and also in mathematics as well.”
Sources
BBC World Service—Discovery podcast
Adventures in Physics and Math, Edward Witten
Memories of a Theoretical Physicist, Joseph Polchinski
Effective Field Theory in Condensed Matter Physics, R. Shankar
Quanta Magazine, A Physicist’s Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality
Discover Magazine, The Man Who Led the Second Superstring Revolution
The Baltimore Sun, Physicist Edward Witten, on the trail of universal truth Interview with the Genius
CNN, Physics’ Sharpest Mind Since Einstein
The Guardian, String Fellows
Deseret News, ‘Superstring Superstar’ Scientist Lights Up The World Of Physics
Scientific American, Physics Titan Still Thinks String Theory Is “On the Right Track”
The Prompt Mag, Quitters Never Prosper—Except When They Actually Do
Cantor’s Paradise, The Smartest Living Mathematical Physicist
The Daily Pochemuchka, On Ed Witten and Innate Talent: A Winding Digression
Two Plus Two Forums
Lex Clips, Edward Frenkel and Lex Fridman
Lex Clips, Peter Woit and Lex Fridman
Lex Clips, Cumrun Vafa and Lex Fridman
Curt Jaimungal, Briane Greene
Curt Jaimungal, Richard Borcherds
Institute of Physics, Newton Medal Winner: Edward Witten
Hyperspace, Michio Kaku
Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, A. Zee
Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters, Freeman Dyson
Why String Theory, Joseph Conlon
Gravitation And Cosmology: Principles And Applications Of The General Theory Of Relativity, Steven Weinberg
The Digital Labyrinth 