20 Facts About Edward Witten

Edward Witten was born on August 26,1951 and is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist.

Edward Witten is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Edward Witten was born on August 26,1951, in Baltimore, Maryland, to a Jewish family.

Edward Witten is the son of Lorraine Witten and Louis Witten, a theoretical physicist specializing in gravitation and general relativity.

Edward Witten attended the Park School of Baltimore, and received his Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in history and minor in linguistics from Brandeis University in 1971.

Edward Witten had aspirations in journalism and politics and published articles in both The New Republic and The Nation in the late 1960s.

Edward Witten attended the University of Michigan for one semester as an economics graduate student before dropping out.

Edward Witten returned to academia, enrolling in applied mathematics at Princeton University in 1973, then shifting departments and receiving a PhD in physics in 1976 and completing a dissertation, "Some problems in the short distance analysis of gauge theories", under the supervision of David Gross.

Edward Witten held a fellowship at Harvard University, visited Oxford University, was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, and held a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

Edward Witten was awarded the Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union in 1990.

Edward Witten has made a profound impact on contemporary mathematics.

Edward Witten's work gave a physical proof of a classical result, the Morse inequalities, by interpreting the theory in terms of supersymmetric quantum mechanics.

Edward Witten's proposal was based on the observation that the five string theories can be mapped to one another by certain rules called dualities and are identified by these dualities.

In collaboration with Nathan Seiberg, Edward Witten established several powerful results in quantum field theories.

Edward Witten has published influential and insightful work in many aspects of quantum field theories and mathematical physics, including the physics and mathematics of anomalies, integrability, dualities, localization, and homologies.

Edward Witten has been honored with numerous awards including a MacArthur Grant, the Fields Medal, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, the National Medal of Science, Pythagoras Award, the Henri Poincare Prize, the Crafoord Prize, the Lorentz Medal the Isaac Newton Medal and the Fundamental Physics Prize.

Edward Witten appeared in the list of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2004.

Edward Witten was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1993.

Edward Witten has been married to Chiara Nappi, a professor of physics at Princeton University, since 1979.

Edward Witten sits on the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now and on the advisory council of J Street.