Here’s an interview that I missed when it first came out back in April. It is with Edward Witten, the single most influential person in my area of theoretical physics for quite some time now. This is for no other reason than his off-scale abilities in every key area of theoretical physics. He was my mentor back in the early ’90s, and the period had an immeasurably huge impact on my development as a physicist. It’s not often that I learn of an interview with him, so I thought I’d point you to it.
The piece, by Matthew Chalmers in New Scientist is here.
Enjoy.
-cvj
“Only goes to show you should read the blog more often….”
Haha, true. I have been remiss in my duties. But now that I am (mostly) caught up with my RSS reader, hopefully I won’t miss the next interesting thing you link to. 🙂
I think there was a time during which this was not the case, but that has expired (I don’t have a new scientist subscription either)…
Only goes to show you should read the blog more often…. 😉
-cvj
Sadly, the interview appears to be available only to subscribers to New Scientist.
1995. Launch of the so-called second superstring revolution. My colleauges organized that. I had nothing to do with that conference, and I did not attend Strings that year.
Best,
-cvj
Were you at the USC conference where Witten had a big impact? Don’t recall the year offhand….
Aha! Clearly Ed is behind the magnet failure at CERN:
“Witten is unlikely to see any data at all from the collider during his stay at CERN. Nine days after he arrived, just as the machine was about to produce its first collisions, an electrical fault closed it down for a year.”
(see “Pauli effect”)
It is always good to see an interview from someone like Ed Witten. It would be nice if Discovery Channel/National Geographic/You Get The Picture shows spent a little more time interviewing Ed Witten and a little less time interviewing people like Michio Kaku.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Michio Kaku is a great guy and has a very positive effect on the public’s perception of science. But, at the end of the day, we have a man who parallels Einstein and Newton intellectually being comparatively ignored.
Now, maybe Witten avoids such interviews, but, I’m sure if these science networks tried hard enough they’d be successful.