Eric Weinstein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Eric W. Weisstein.

Eric Weinstein
Eric Weinstein in January 2019.png
Born
Eric Ross Weinstein

(1965-10-26) October 26, 1965 (age 55)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania (BA)
Harvard University (MA, PhD)
OccupationManaging director of Thiel Capital
Known forIntellectual dark web
Spouse(s)Pia Malaney[1]
RelativesBret Weinstein (brother)

Eric Ross Weinstein (born October 26, 1965)[2] is an American cultural commentator and mathematician. He is a managing director of Thiel Capital.[1][3]

Education[]

Weinstein received his PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard University in 1992 under the supervision of Raoul Bott.[4][5][6] In his dissertation, Extension of Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations Across the Eighth Dimension, Weinstein showed that the self-dual Yang–Mills equations were not really peculiar to dimension four and admitted generalizations to higher dimensions.[7]

Career[]

Physics[]

Weinstein left academia after stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. More than 20 years later, in 2013, he announced a potential unified theory of physics. At the invitation of mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, Weinstein described the theory at a colloquium, Geometric Unity, in May 2013 at the University of Oxford's Clarendon Laboratory.[8] Physicists expressed skepticism about the theory.[8][9] Joseph Conlon of Oxford stated that some of the predicted particles would already have been detected in existing accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider.[8] Science writer Jennifer Ouellette criticized the colloquium in a blog for Scientific American, arguing that experts could not properly evaluate Weinstein's ideas because there was no published paper.[10]

Eight years passed until Weinstein released a draft paper of Geometric Unity on April 1, 2021. The paper qualifies that the author "is not a physicist" but an "entertainer" and a podcast host. After its release, it received strong criticism from the scientific community, including having "no visible impact" and having "gaps both mathematical and physical in origin that jeopardize Geometric Unity as a well-defined theory, much less one that is a candidate for a theory of everything."[11]

Intellectual dark web[]

Weinstein said he coined the term "intellectual dark web" after his brother Bret Weinstein resigned from Evergreen State College, in response to a campus controversy. The term is used to describe a number of academics and podcast hosts.[12][13]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b McClurg, Lesley (May 7, 2015). "Let's Talk About Death Over Dinner". NPR. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
  2. ^ Eric, Weinstein (October 26, 2020). "Twitter post from Eric Weinstein on his birthday". Twitter. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  3. ^ Illing, Sean (August 20, 2017). "Why capitalism can't survive without socialism". Vox. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  4. ^ Eric Weinstein at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ^ Tu, Loring W., ed. (2018). "Raoul Bott: Collected Papers, Volume 5". Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Contemporary Mathematicians. Birkhäuser: 47. ISBN 9783319517810. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  6. ^ "PhD Dissertations Archival Listing". Harvard Mathematics Department. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  7. ^ Beaulieu, Laurent; Kanno, Hiroaki; Singer, I. M. (1998). "Special Quantum Field Theories in Eight And Other Dimensions". Communications in Mathematical Physics. 194 (1): 149–175. arXiv:hep-th/9704167. Bibcode:1998CMaPh.194..149B. doi:10.1007/s002200050353. ISSN 0010-3616. S2CID 3238703.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b c Pontzen, Andrew (May 24, 2013). "Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing". New Scientist. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  9. ^ Aron, Jacob (June 2013). "How to test Weinstein's provocative theory of everything". New Scientist. 218 (2920): 10. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(13)61403-7. ISSN 0262-4079.
  10. ^ Ouellette, Jennifer. "Dear Guardian: You've Been Played". Scientific American Blog Network. Archived from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  11. ^ Ongweso Jr, Edward (April 12, 2021). "Eric Weinstein Says He Solved the Universe's Mysteries. Scientists Disagree". Vice.
  12. ^ Phillips, Melanie (May 23, 2018). "'Intellectual Dark Web' leads fightback against academic orthodoxy". The Australian. Archived from the original on May 23, 2018. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  13. ^ Svrluga, Susan; Heim, Joe (June 1, 2017). "Threat shuts down college embroiled in racial dispute". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 1, 2018.

External links[]

Retrieved from ""