Author Archives: woit

On Inference

Posted on February 2, 2019 by woit

The first issue of the magazine Inference appeared online back in 2014. At the time, it was surrounded by a significant amount of mystery: who were the editors, what were they trying to do, and who was funding it? I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 50 Comments

Three Short Book Reviews

Posted on January 29, 2019 by woit

Unfortunately I don’t have time now to write about the three following books at the length that they deserve, but here are some quick comments on three books worth your attention: A carefully produced detailed write-up of Sidney Coleman’s Harvard … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 11 Comments

Should the Europeans Give Up?

Posted on January 22, 2019 by woit

The European HEP community is now engaged in a “Strategy Update” process, the next step of which will be an open symposium this May in Granada. Submissions to the process were due last month, and I assume that what was … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Favorite Old Posts | 78 Comments

Michael Atiyah 1929-2019

Posted on January 16, 2019 by woit

While away on vacation, I heard last week the sad news of the death last week of Michael Atiyah, at the age of 89. Atiyah was both a truly great mathematician and a wonderful human being. In his mathematical work … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 7 Comments

Roy Glauber 1925-2018: Notes on QFT

Posted on December 28, 2018 by woit

I saw today that Roy Glauber has passed away, at the age of 93. John Preskill speculates that Glauber was the last living member of the wartime T division at Los Alamos. My only interaction with him was that he … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 13 Comments

This Week’s Hype (and a couple other things)

Posted on December 28, 2018 by woit

For today’s university press release designed to mislead the public with hype about string theory, Uppsala University has Our Universe: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension. It’s the Swampland variant of string theory hype, based on this preprint, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Tim May 1951-2018

Posted on December 24, 2018 by woit

I was sorry to learn yesterday of the death of Tim May, who had been a frequent commenter here on the blog. For more about his life, see here and here. One can find his comments here for instance by … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 2 Comments

The Chronic Incompleteness of String Theory

Posted on December 19, 2018 by woit

Ex-string theorist turned philosopher Richard Dawid has become known over the years for his arguments that string theory is a theory to be evaluated not by the conventional scientific method, in which experiment plays a role, but by “post-empirical theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on December 19, 2018 by woit

A few months ago string theorists at Stanford had their university press office put out hype-filled promotional material about their research field, this was discussed here. One odd thing about this was that normally such PR efforts are made in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 3 Comments

Notes on Current Affairs

Posted on December 8, 2018 by woit

Blogging has been light recently, partly due to quite a bit of traveling. This included a brief trip the week before last to Los Angeles, where I met up with, among others, Sabine Hossenfelder. This past week I was in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments