It establishes Minkowski space as a stable ground state of the gravitational field. This theorem asserts that (under appropriate assumptions) the total energy of a gravitating system is always positive and can be zero only if the geometry of spacetime is that of flat Minkowski space. Īnother result for which Witten was awarded the Fields Medal was his proof in 1981 of the positive energy theorem in general relativity. Although Witten's work was based on the mathematically ill-defined notion of a Feynman path integral and was therefore not mathematically rigorous, mathematicians were able to systematically develop Witten's ideas, leading to the theory of Reshetikhin–Turaev invariants. In particular, Witten realized that a physical theory now called Chern–Simons theory could provide a framework for understanding the mathematical theory of knots and 3-manifolds.
In the late 1980s, Witten coined the term topological quantum field theory for a certain type of physical theory in which the expectation values of observable quantities encode information about the topology of spacetime. In a written address to the ICM, Michael Atiyah said of Witten:Īs an example of Witten's work in pure mathematics, Atiyah cites his application of techniques from quantum field theory to the mathematical subject of low-dimensional topology. Witten was awarded the Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union in 1990, becoming the first physicist to win the prize. He held a fellowship at Harvard University (1976–77), visited Oxford University (1977–78), was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (1977–1980), and held a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (1982). in physics in 1976 and completing a dissertation titled "Some problems in the short distance analysis of gauge theories" under the supervision of David Gross.
He returned to academia, enrolling in applied mathematics at Princeton University in 1973, then shifting departments and receiving a Ph.D. Witten attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for one semester as an economics graduate student before dropping out. In 1972 he worked for six months in George McGovern's presidential campaign. He had aspirations in journalism and politics and published articles in both The New Republic and The Nation in the late 1960s. Witten attended the Park School of Baltimore (class of '68), and received his Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in history and minor in linguistics from Brandeis University in 1971. He is the son of Lorraine (née Wollach) Witten and Louis Witten, a theoretical physicist specializing in gravitation and general relativity. Witten was born on August 26, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland, to a Jewish family. He is considered to be the practical founder of M-theory. In 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union, awarded for his 1981 proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity.
In addition to his contributions to physics, Witten's work has significantly impacted pure mathematics. Witten is a researcher in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical physics. He is currently the Charles Simonyi Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. Institute for Advanced Study Harvard University Oxford University California Institute of Technology Princeton UniversityĮdward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. Theoretical physics Mathematical physics Superstring theory M-theory Seiberg–Witten theory Seiberg-Witten map Seiberg–Witten invariants Wess–Zumino–Witten model Weinberg–Witten theorem Gromov–Witten invariant Hořava–Witten domain wall Vafa–Witten theorem Witten index BCFW recursion Topological quantum field theory (Witten-type TQFTs) Topological string theory CSW rules Witten conjecture Witten zeta function Hanany–Witten transition Twistor string theory Chern–Simons theory Positive energy theorem Witten-Veneziano mechanism Jonathan Bagger (1983) Cumrun Vafa (1985) Xiao-Gang Wen (1987) Dror Bar-Natan (1991) Shamit Kachru (1994) Eva Silverstein (1996) Sergei Gukov (2001) Some Problems in the Short Distance Analysis of Gauge Theories