Edward Witten
Born	(1951-08-26) August 26, 1951 (age 60) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Residence	Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Theoretical physics Superstring Theory
Institutions	Institute for Advanced Study Harvard University California Institute of Technology Princeton University
Alma mater	Brandeis University (B.A.) University of Wisconsin, Madison Princeton University (PhD)
Doctoral advisor	David Gross
Doctoral students	Jonathan Bagger Cumrun Vafa Steven Giddings Xiao-Gang Wen Eva Silverstein Shamit Kachru Sergei Gukov Mukund Rangamani Tamar Friedmann Peter Srvcek Christopher Beasley Dror Bar-Natan
Known for	String theory M-theory Quantum Gravity Quantum Field Theory Supersymmetry
Notable awards	MacArthur Fellowship (1982) Dirac Medal (1985) Albert Einstein Award (1985) Fields Medal (1990) Henri Poincaré Prize (2006) Alan T. Waterman Award (1995) Nemmers Prize (2000) Henniemen Award (2004) Harvey Prize (2005) Crafoord Prize (2008) Lorentz Medal (2010) Isaac Newton Medal (2010)
Spouse	Chiara Nappi
Website
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~witten/

Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist with a focus on mathematical physics who is currently a professor of Mathematical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Witten is a researcher in superstring theory, a theory of quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories and other areas of mathematical physics.^[1]

He has made contributions in mathematics and helped bridge gaps between fundamental physics and various areas of mathematics. In 1990 he was the world's first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Union of Mathematics. In 2004, Time magazine stated that Witten was widely thought to be the world's greatest living theoretical physicist.^[2]

Birth and education[link]

Witten was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the son of Lorraine W. Witten and Louis Witten, a theoretical physicist specializing in gravitation and general relativity.

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. He worked briefly for George McGovern, a Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. McGovern lost the election in a landslide to Richard Nixon.

Witten attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for one semester as an economics graduate student before dropping out. He returned to academia, enrolling in applied mathematics at Princeton University then shifting departments and receiving a Ph.D. in physics in 1976 under David Gross, the 2004 Nobel laureate in Physics. He held a fellowship at Harvard University (1976–77), was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (1977–80), and held a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (1982).

Research[link]

Edward Witten with David Gross and Stephen Hawking.

Witten has made numerous contributions to theoretical physics, in work that has spawned a large number of highly mathematical results. As of August, 2011, he has more than 340 publications primarily in quantum field theory and string theory and in related areas of topology and geometry. In 2004, Time magazine wrote that Witten was "generally considered the greatest theoretical physicist in the world."^[2]

One of Witten's contributions in physics is a natural solution to the so-called hierarchy problem. The Standard Model of Particle Physics predicts a particle known as Higgs Boson. Its mass however seems much lighter than what the Model predicts. Witten has shown that the mechanism of broken supersymmetry offers a natural explanation to the hierarchy problem. In supersymmetry theory, the Witten Index tells whether supersymmetry is broken or not. Witten went on to make contributions in supersymmetric gauge theories. Along with Nathan Seiberg of the Institute of Advanced Studies Witten developed what is now known as Seiberg-Witten Theory which is related to Donaldson theory in mathematics.

As early as 1984, Witten worked on an important problem of gravitational anomaly which contributed to what is known as the first string theory revolution. With Gary Horowitz, Philip Candelas and Andy Strominger Witten showed how string theory can lead to realistic descriptions by compactifying the theory on a higher dimensional manifold known as Calabi Yau manifolds. In the string theory conference at University of Southern California in the mid-'90s, Witten solved an outstanding problem of how five different versions of string theory were just the same theory which are related to one another by dualities. Also, Witten conjectured the existence of a unifying theory called M-theory whose complete structures had not been discovered yet and non-technically could be described as what could be possibly the most fundamental physical theory of the universe. Stephen Hawking, in his book The Grand Design, wrote that M-theory may be the ultimate theory of the universe.

Edward Witten's other contribution to physics was to a relatively recent result of gauge gravity duality. In 1997, Juan Maldacena formulated a result establishing a relationship between gauge theories and a certain theory of gravity commonly known as AdS/CFT correspondence. This discovery has dominated theoretical physics for the past 15 years and Witten's work following Maldacena's insight has shed light on this relationship. His other contributions include a simplified proof of the positive energy theorem involving spinors in general relativity, his work relating supersymmetry and Morse theory, his introduction of topological quantum field theory and related work on mirror symmetry, knot theory, twistor theory and D-branes and their intersections.

Witten was awarded the Fields Medal^[3][4] by the International Mathematical Union in 1990, becoming the first physicist to win the prize. Sir Michael Atiyah said of Witten, "Although he is definitely a physicist, his command of mathematics is rivaled by few mathematicians... Time and again he has surprised the mathematical community by a brilliant application of physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems... he has made a profound impact on contemporary mathematics. In his hands physics is once again providing a rich source of inspiration and insight in mathematics."^[5] One such example of his impact on pure mathematics is his framework for understanding the Jones polynomial using Chern–Simons theory. This had implications for low-dimensional topology and led to quantum invariants such as the Witten–Reshetikhin–Turaev invariants.

Personal life[link]

Witten is married to Chiara Nappi, a professor of physics at Princeton University. They have two daughters, Ilana and Daniela, and one son, Rafael, and a granddaughter Nava. Edward Witten serves on the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now.

Awards and honors[link]

Witten has been honored with numerous awards including a MacArthur Grant (1982), the Fields Medal (1990), the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics (2000), the National Medal of Science^[6] (2002), Pythagoras Award^[7] (2005), the Henri Poincaré Prize (2006), the Crafoord Prize (2008), the Lorentz Medal (2010) and the Isaac Newton Medal (2010). Pope Benedict XVI appointed Witten as a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2006). He also appeared in the list of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2004.

See also[link]

• Gromov–Witten invariant
• Hořava–Witten domain wall
• M theory
• Seiberg–Witten gauge theory
• Seiberg–Witten invariant
• Vafa–Witten theorem
• Weinberg–Witten theorem
• Wess–Zumino–Witten model
• Witten conjecture
• Witten index

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Edward Witten

• Faculty webpage
• Publications on ArXiv
• Witten theme tree on arxiv.org
• Futurama episode information
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Edward Witten", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Witten.html .
• Edward Witten at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Institute of Physics profile

Charles Simonyi
Born	(1948-09-10) September 10, 1948 (age 63) Budapest, Hungary
Nationality	Hungarian
Occupation	Software architect
Known for	Hungarian notation, space tourism, Style sheet (desktop publishing)
Notable work(s)	Microsoft Office

Charles Simonyi (Hungarian: Simonyi Károly; born September 10, 1948, son of Karoly Simonyi) is a Hungarian-American computer software executive who, as head of Microsoft's application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft's flagship Office suite of applications.^[1][2] He now heads his own company, Intentional Software,^[1] with the aim of developing and marketing his concept of intentional programming.^[3][4][5] In April 2007, aboard Soyuz TMA-10, he became the fifth space tourist and the second Hungarian in space. In March 2009, aboard Soyuz TMA-14, he made a second trip to the International Space Station. His estimated net worth is US$1 billion.^[6]

Biography[link]

Early life in Hungary[link]

Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Simonyi Károly (the elder), a professor of electrical engineering^[7] at Technical University of Budapest. While in high school he worked part-time as a night watchman at a computer laboratory, overseeing a large Soviet Ural II^[8] mainframe. He took an interest in computing^[9] and learned to program from one of the laboratory's engineers. By the time he left school, he had learned to develop compilers and sold one of these to a government department. He presented a demonstration of his compiler to the members of a Danish computer trade delegation.^[9]

Denmark and USA[link]

He was hired by Denmark's A/S Regnecentralen in 1966 and moved to the United States in 1968 to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his B.S. in Engineering Mathematics & Statistics in 1972.

Simonyi then went to Stanford University^[1] for graduate studies and was hired by Xerox PARC^[1] during its most productive period, working alongside luminaries such as Alan Kay, Butler Lampson, and Robert Metcalfe on the development of the Xerox Alto, one of the first personal computers. He and Lampson developed Bravo, the first WYSIWYG document preparation program, which became operational in 1974. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1977 with a dissertation on a software project management technique called "metaprogramming". This approach sought to defeat Brooks' law by requiring all programmers to communicate through the manager rather than directly. Simonyi remained at PARC until 1981.

Microsoft[link]

In 1981, at Metcalfe's suggestion, he applied directly to Bill Gates for a job at Microsoft.^[9] At the firm, Simonyi oversaw the development of what became its most profitable products, Word and Excel, as well as Excel's predecessor Multiplan. With Multiplan, Simonyi pursued a strategy called the "revenue bomb", whereby the product ran on a virtual machine that was ported to each platform. The resulting application was highly portable, although Simonyi did not foresee the rapid adoption of MS-DOS that made such efforts less important.^[10] Simonyi introduced to Microsoft the techniques of object-oriented programming that he had learned at Xerox. He developed the Hungarian notation convention^[11] for naming variables. These standards were originally part of his doctoral thesis.^[11] The Hungarian notation has been widely used inside Microsoft.^[12]

Intentional Software[link]

Simonyi remained at Microsoft during its rapid rise in the software industry, becoming one of its highest-ranking developers. He left abruptly in 2002 to co-found, with business partner Gregor Kiczales, a company called Intentional Software.^[13] This company markets the intentional programming concepts Simonyi developed at Microsoft Research.^[14] In this approach to software, a programmer first builds a toolbox specific to a given problem domain (such as life insurance). Domain experts, aided by the programmer, then describe the program's intended behavior in a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)-like manner. An automated system uses the program description and the toolbox to generate the final program. Successive changes are only done at the WYSIWYG level.^[15]

In 2004, Simonyi received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for the industry-wide impact of his innovative work in information technology.

Patents[link]

Simonyi currently holds 11 patents US patent 6070007  US patent 6665866  US patent 2001037496  WO patent 2004102380  WO patent 2007053833  WO patent 2007076269  EP patent 1923782  JP patent 2008140410  US patent 2010146377  JP patent 2010146583  US patent 2010229092 

Philanthropy[link]

Simonyi has been an active philanthropist.

He has funded the establishment of three professorships:

• In 1995, the Simonyi Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, first held by Richard Dawkins 1995-2008, 2008–present Marcus du Sautoy
• A Simonyi Professorship for Innovation in Teaching endowed chair at Stanford University, held by Eric S. Roberts 1997-2002
• In 2005, as part of $25 million donation, a Simonyi Professorship of Mathematical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, held by Edward Witten 2005–present

In January 2004, Simonyi created the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, through which Simonyi supports Seattle-area arts, science, and educational programs. As of May 2012, the Fund size was $75 million. Grant recipients have included the Seattle Symphony ($10 million), and the Seattle Public Library ($3 million), the Metropolitan Opera and the Julliard School. In 2005, the Fund donated $25 million to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In January, 2008 the Simonyi Fund and Bill Gates pledged $20 million and $10 million respectively to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.^[16]

Personal life[link]

Simonyi is married to Lisa Persdotter, the daughter of a Swedish millionaire. She is 32 years his junior. They were engaged on 8 August 2008 and were married on 22 November 2008 in a private ceremony in Gothenburg, Sweden, attended by their closest friends, among them Bill Gates.^[17][18] Their first child, a daughter named Lilian Simonyi, was born in February 2011. ^[19]

Simonyi dating Martha Stewart for 15 years until 2008.^[20]

Simonyi spends six months per year^[21] on his custom-built 233-foot (71 m) long super yacht named Skat.^[21]

Simonyi's residence in Medina, Washington, "Villa Simonyi", is a modern house designed by architect Wendell Lovett, where Simonyi displays his collection of paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Victor Vasarely.^[22][23][24]

Spaceflights[link]

Charles Simonyi
Space Adventures Tourist
Nationality	Hungarian
Born	(1948-09-10) September 10, 1948 (age 63) Budapest, Hungary
Other occupation	Software architect
Time in space	26d 14h 27m
Missions	Soyuz TMA-10 / TMA-9, Soyuz TMA-14 / TMA-13
Mission insignia

In early 2006, Simonyi expressed interest in becoming a space tourist and signed agreements with the space tourism company, Space Adventures, Ltd., for a ten-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

In August 2006, he passed a pre-qualification medical exam by the Russian Federal Space Agency, called the State Medical Commission (GMK). He started training at Star City in September 2006.^[2]

He launched on April 7, 2007 (GMT),^[25] on board Soyuz TMA-10. He shared a ride with two Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station,^[8] and returned aboard Soyuz TMA-9, scheduled to depart from the ISS on April 20, 2007.

Upon arrival to the ISS on April 9, 2007 Simonyi said, "It is amazing how it appears from the blackness of the sky. It was very, very dramatic. It was like a big stage set, a fantastic production of some incredible opera or modern play. That's what I was referring to when I said I was blown away."^[26]

Simonyi's expected return on April 20, 2007 was delayed by one day due to 'boggy ground'. He returned to Earth on April 21, 2007 along with an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut.^[27]

In October 2008, he booked for a second trip to the ISS through Space Adventures on board Soyuz TMA-14.^[28] On March 26, 2009 he returned to space aboard Soyuz TMA-14.^[29] He returned to Earth on board Soyuz TMA-13. Along with Soyuz Commander Yuri Lonchakov and Michael Fincke, Simonyi landed in Kazakhstan on April 8, 2009.^[30]

Radio communication while aboard ISS[link]

Charles Simonyi is a licensed amateur radio operator with the call sign KE7KDP, and planned to contact a number of schools while on his flight on the International Space Station using amateur radio for the communication with those schools. On April 11, 2007 the American Radio Relay League reported that Simonyi was already making ham radio contacts from space.^[31]

One of the schools Simonyi contacted was Cedar Point Elementary in Bristow, Virginia. A telebridge conversation was held on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Onboard with him were Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin.^{[32][citation needed]} On March 30, 2009 he held a phone conversation with students at the Girls' Middle School in Mountain View, CA, USA in which he said that one of the most surprising things about traveling to space was that upon returning to earth the air feels very thick, very heavy, like "breathing Pepto-Bismol." He also stated that talking with the students from the school "made his day."

Simonyi used his Hungarian call sign HA5SIK^[33] when he contacted 25 radio amateurs from Hungary in a record attempt on April 12. He contacted former and current students of Tivadar Puskás Polytechnic, Budapest on April 13.^[33]

See also[link]

• Hungarian notation

References[link]

External links[link]

• NASA biography of Charles SimonyiPDF (20.4 KiB)
• Charles in Space
• Charles Simonyi, the benefactor of the Simonyi Professorship at the University of Oxford
• Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences
• The Rosetta code: archaeology of the Gier-Algol compiler program (an Intentional Software presentation by Simonyi)
• Forbes interview, 23 December 2002

Shamit Kachru (Kashmiri: शमित काचरू (Devanagari), شمت کاچرو (Nastaleeq)) (born 1970 in Champaign, Illinois) is a string theorist who is a professor of physics at Stanford University and at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). He is the son of the Indian Kashmiri scholar Braj Kachru. He is married to Eva Silverstein, who is also a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and at SLAC. Kachru is an award-winning physicist and an expert in string theory and quantum field theory,^[1] and their applications in cosmology, condensed matter physics, and elementary particle theory. He has made central contributions to the study of compactifications of string theory from ten to four dimensions, especially in the exploration of mechanisms which could yield string models of dark energy or cosmic inflation.

He has also made notable contributions to the discovery and exploration of string dualities, to the study of models of supersymmetry breaking in string theory, and to the construction of calculable dual descriptions of strongly-coupled particle physics and condensed matter systems using the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Kachru, a Professor of Physics at Stanford University, is a recipient of a Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship, the Bergmann Memorial Award, and the ACIPA Outstanding Young Physicist Prize.

Kachru graduated from University High School in Urbana, Illinois and from Harvard University before obtaining a doctorate in physics from Princeton University under the supervision of Edward Witten. Kachru was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University.

Kachru is best known for his extensive work on stabilizing the extra dimensions of string theory, in particular finding (along with Renata Kallosh, Andrei Linde, and Sandip Trivedi) the first models of accelerated expansion of the universe in low energy supersymmetric string compactifications.

He has also made notable contributions to string theory duality (with Cumrun Vafa), the AdS/CFT correspondence (with Eva Silverstein), and to the construction of models of cosmic inflation in string theory.

References[link]

1. ^ [1]

External links[link]

• Faculty page at Stanford University

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