Search Results for: Feynman

Solar

Posted on April 5, 2010 by woit

Ian McEwan’s new novel Solar is now out, with a plot featuring Michael Beard, an aging theoretical physicist. Beard won a Nobel prize early in his career for the “Beard-Einstein Conflation”, which supposedly involves some unexpected coherent behavior in QED, … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 9 Comments

The Holy Patron of String Theory and its Holy Grail

Posted on September 14, 2009 by woit

Science News is running a long interview with Murray Gell-Mann, who will be celebrating his 80th birthday tomorrow. Gell-Mann was arguably (Feynman is one who would argue..) the most influential figure in theoretical particle physics throughout the 1950s and 1960s. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

News from CERN, Witten Interview

Posted on June 18, 2009 by woit

The new CERN Bulletin is available, and it contains a link to a recent video interview of Witten, who has been visiting CERN during the past year. Some other things in this issue: Bill Gates recently visited the LHC, bringing … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 4 Comments

Yau Birthday Conference

Posted on August 30, 2008 by woit

There’s a conference at Harvard this week celebrating (somewhat early) the 60th birthday of the geometer Shing-Tung Yau. Since I was passing through Cambridge on the way back from a short vacation, I managed to catch a few of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Strings 2008

Posted on August 17, 2008 by woit

Strings 2008 starts tomorrow at CERN, with about 400 physicists in attendance. CERN will be providing a live webcast for the rest of us. The timetable of the talks is here. The first afternoon will be devoted not to string … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 24 Comments

The Black Hole War

Posted on June 23, 2008 by woit

Leonard Susskind has a new book that’s now out in the bookstores, entitled The Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. It’s about the black hole information paradox, structured around his … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 33 Comments

Atiyah on Atiyah-Bott

Posted on June 11, 2008 by woit

This week I’m in Montreal attending a conference in honor of Raoul Bott (who I wrote about in some detail here a couple years ago). On the first day of the conference, a documentary film about Bott made by his … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Bryce DeWitt on Quantum Gravity and String Theory

Posted on May 21, 2008 by woit

Last night a preprint appeared on the arXiv from beyond the grave, an undated manuscript entitled Quantum Gravity, Yesterday and Today, found without any indication of its purpose in the files of Bryce DeWitt, who passed away in 2004. DeWitt … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

This and That

Posted on April 27, 2008 by woit

The interactions.org web-site has a new useful feature, Interactions Blog Watch, which aggregates links to recent physics-related blog entries. One of the older such aggregators I know of is Mixed States, but it seems to have stopped on March 15. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments

Peter Goddard on the Birth of String Theory

Posted on February 25, 2008 by woit

Last spring there was a conference held in Florence which brought together many of those who worked on dual models and string theory during the late sixties and early seventies. Slides from the talks are here, and many of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments