Home › Authors › Edward Witten
Edward Witten Quotes
born 1951 United States
Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, who is widely known as “the most brilliant physicist of his generation.” He is a leading researcher in string theory. In 1990, Witten won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in pure mathematics.
United States Physicists Scientists Random Edward Witten quote
22 quotes
It would be silly to throw away the right answer because we don't like it.
Good wrong ideas are extremely scarce... and good wrong ideas that even remotely rival the majesty of string theory have never been seen.
It is very possible that a proper understanding of string theory will make the space-time continuum melt away.... String theory is a miracle through and through.
Generally speaking, all the really great ideas of physics are really spin-offs of string theory... Some of them were discovered first, but I consider that a mere accident of the development on planet earth.
It was clear that if I didn't spend the rest of my life concentrating on string theory, I would simply be missing my life's calling.
We know a lot of things, but what we don't know is a lot more.
Understanding what M-theory really is—the physics it embodies—would transform our understanding of nature at least as radically as occurred in any of the major scientific upheavals of the past.
I don't think that any physicist would have been clever enough to have invented string theory on purpose... Luckily, it was invented by accident.
Vibrating strings in 10 dimensions is just a weird fact... An explanation of that weird fact would tell you why there are 10 dimensions in the first place.
Nature seems to be based on very deep ideas and principles, of which we currently understand only a little.
When one is doing research, the trick is always to find a problem easy enough for you to make progress, but hard enough that it's worthwhile to make progress.
Even though it is, properly speaking, a postprediction, in the sense that the experiment was made before the theory, the fact that gravity is a consequence of string theory, to me, is one of the greatest theoretical insights ever.
String theory is extremely attractive because gravity is forced upon us. All known consistent string theories include gravity, so while gravity is impossible in quantum field theory as we have known it, it is obligatory in string theory.
I would expect that a proper elucidation of what string theory really is all about would involve a revolution in our concepts of the basic laws of physics - similar in scope to any that occurred in the past.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
... it's one thing in physics to write down the equations, but then you have to solve them — and that is sometimes easier said than done.
... one really has to stand on one's head to reconcile MOND with what is well-established about relativistic physics, and the results are pretty obscure and far-fetched looking.
String theory at its finest is, or should be, a new branch of geometry. ...I, myself, believe rather strongly that the proper setting for string theory will prove to be a suitable elaboration of the geometrical ideas upon which Einstein based general relativity.
At a given moment, the time may simply not be ripe to solve a particular problem. Progress on something else might be needed first, and the necessary clue might come from a different direction. In the case of quantum gravity, the unexpected direction was string theory.
Quantum mechanics... developed through some rather messy, complicated processes stimulated by experiment. While it's a very rich and wonderful theory, it doesn't quite have the conceptual foundation of general relativity.
Topics Edward Witten is quoted on