Witten was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the son of Lorraine (Wollach) Witten and Louis Witten, a theoretical physicist specializing in gravitation and general relativity.[3]
Witten attended the Park School of Baltimore (class of '68), and received his Bachelor of Arts with a major in history and minor in linguistics from Brandeis University in 1971. He published articles in The New Republic and The Nation. In 1968, Witten published an article in The Nation arguing that the New Left had no strategy.[4] He worked briefly for George McGovern's presidential campaign. McGovern lost the 1972 election in a landslide to Richard Nixon.
Witten attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for one semester as an economics graduate student before
…show more content…
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.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]
Another result for which Witten was awarded the Fields Medal was his (nonrigorous) proof in 1981 of the positive energy theorem in general relativity.[8] 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. It establishes Minkowski space as a stable ground state of the gravitational field. While the original proof of this result due to Richard Schoen and Shing-Tung Yau used variational methods,[9][10] Witten's proof used ideas from supergravity theory to simplify the argument.
A third area mentioned in Atiyah's address is
The industrial revolution began in the 17th century and made significant change in the world. An era was over and the new one was beginning. The revolution has advantages and disadvantages. Rising of living standards, improving of health, lifetime and trade system are its advantages. On the other hand, manufacturing has caused major problems such as deforestation, excessive use of fossil fuel sources, irresponsible industrialisation and agricultural development. These changes have increased world’s atmospheric concentration of water vapour, CO2, CH4 and other gases (Stocker, 2013). These gases capture part of energy receiving from sun and trap this heat inside atmosphere that causes rising temperatures on the earth’s surface. Naturally, for continuation of life these gases are necessary, but result of the human events these gases has produced more than plants and environment need (Robins, 2016). Also, we call them Green Houses Gases because they have the similar effect like the ‘greenhouses’ utilised to increase condition of vegetables.
This essay will explore parallels between the ideas of the scientific revolution and the enlightenment. The scientific revolution describes a time when great changes occurred in the way the universe was viewed, d through the advances of sciences during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The enlightenment refers to a movement that grew out of the new scientific ideas of the revolution that occurred in the late seventeenth to eighteenth century. Although both the scientific revolution and enlightenment encapsulate different ideas, the scientific revolution laid the underlying ideological foundations for the enlightenment movement. A number of parallels
In Peter Winn's Weavers of Revolution, a factory in Santiago, Chile fights for their independence against the Chilean government of the 1970's. While this rebellion is going on, presidential elections are taking place and Salvador Allende is the presidential candidate which represents the common people. The relation between Allende and the people he represents is a unique one because at first this class, the working class, helps and supports Allende to become president, but then both parties realize their different plans for the future and the working class actually contributes to the downfall of Allende's presidency.
Hughey graduated from Vanderbilt University with a B.A degree. After graduating he worked for congressman Tom Bevill on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. “Following the job on Capitol Hill I came back home and attended the University of Alabama School of Law. Hughey said.”
The concept of imperialism is one that has pervaded nearly every major society or empire throughout human history. It seems to be a natural consequence of societies growing in size, power, and knowledge. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries vast changes occurred in Western Europe (and soon spread elsewhere) that spurred a new round of imperialism the likes of which had not been seen before. The changes were the industrial revolution that was taking place. Countries were rapidly advancing to industrial societies producing much greater quantities of goods at much lower costs. The goods produced ranged everywhere from cotton textiles to military machinery, all of which would play important roles in rounds of imperialistic expansion that
Analyze the extent to which these values and purposes were transformed and challenged over time.
In Peter Winn's Weavers of Revolution, a factory in Santiago, Chile fights for their independence against the Chilean government of the 1970's. While this rebellion is going on, presidential elections are taking place and Salvador Allende is the presidential candidate which represents the common people. The relation between Allende and the people he represents is a unique one because at first this class, the working class, helps and supports Allende to become president, but then both parties realize their different plans for the future and the working class actually contributes to the downfall of Allende's presidency.
During the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson succeeded in defeating the incumbent, John Adams, and assumed the presidency. In terms of elections though, the election of 1800 itself was a fascinating election in that it a heavily-contested election and was effectively the first time political parties ran smear campaigns against each other during an election. The Republican Party attacked the Federalists for being anti-liberty and monarchist and tried to persuade the public that the Federalists were abusing their power through acts such as the Alien & Sedition Acts and the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion (Tindall and Shi 315). The Federalists, on the other hand, attacked Jefferson for his atheism and support of the French Revolution
He attended the University of Chicago and after serving in the Navy he attended the Northwestern University Law School and graduated with the highest grades in the law school history. He has been married twice and has a son and three daughters from his first wife.
The Industrial Revolution is the name given to the movement in which machines changed people's way of life as well as their methods of manufacturer. It brought three important changes: inventions of machines that simplify and speed up the work of hand tools, use of steam (and other power) versus human power, adoption of a factory system. Workers were brought together under one roof and were supplied machines. The Industrial Revolution began throughout the world relatively during the same time period, and although it had its beginning in remote times, it is still continuing in some places.
Through wonder and complicated thinking Einstein gave a strong argument on how space and time could be curved. By Einstein creating this theory he completely altered the way we could think of space and time. Einstein pictured space as a three-dimensional version of a thin rubber sheet. If you put a heavy object on the sheet, it makes a dent, and therefore an object's path would be affected by that dent. So, planets orbit the sun because “the space around the sun is curved in the 2-D equivalent of a funnel or basin”.( http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/20th_people_einstein.html) “The curvature of space results in the effects of gravity. This notion of curved space becomes more tangible . . . occurs because its curvature of space”. (http://www.fi.edu/learn/case files/einstein/curved.html) Einstein introduced this special theory of relativity because it dealt only with the special case of motion in frames of reference that are neither increasing nor decreasing to the viewer. In other words, “the frames of the reference are . . . a consistent speed in a straight line”. (Jake Goldberg pg.47) Einstein also changed how we now think about gravity itself! He came up with his own theory of gravity as well, called Equivalence Principle. “Einstein said that when he was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: 'If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.' I was
Berkeley did not care about the farmers. It was obvious that the only thing he
During the Scientific Revolution scientists such as Galileo, Copernicus, Descartes and Bacon wrestled with questions about God, human aptitude, and the possibilities of understanding the world. Eventually, the implications of the new scientific findings began to affect the way people thought and behaved throughout Europe. Society began to question the authority of traditional knowledge about the universe. This in turn, allowed them to question traditional views of the state and social order. No longer was the world constructed as the somewhat simple Ptolemaic Model suggested. The Earth for the first time became explicable and was no longer the center of the universe. Many beliefs that had been held for hundreds of years now proved to be
Some say the glorious revolution was one of the greatest landmarks in the history of England. The glorious revolution is a very important event in history for multiple reasons. It wasn’t exactly a peaceful occasion but it was one in which no war of fight occurred. This was a pleasant change for England at the time because they had been experiencing plenty of fights over the throne and for once it was a relatively smooth transaction.
The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century changed Europe forever. At the front of this change was Great Britain, which used some natural advantages and tremendous thinking and innovation to become the leader of the Industrial Revolution.