witten is often considered to be “the greatest living theoretical physicist”
why is that, doesn’t he work in easier and less technical fields then other theoretical physicists
what are his contributions that he is considered the king of string theorists? compared to a whole bunch of other guys
My impression has been that the work he does is typically groundbreaking, giving him a large influence in particle physics. Particle physics has a strong herd mentality. One person (like Ed Witten) will come up with something really innovative, and then a bunch of grad students / post-docs / professors will follow up with derivative work that builds off of the original idea. For example, Maldacena and Witten did some groundbreaking work in AdS/CFT, and then for a decade+ afterwards everyone does Ads/CFT…
A somewhat uncharitable interpretation of this phenomenon is that you have some first-rate intelligences in particle physics, like Witten, Arkani-Hamed, Seiberg etc and then everyone else, the second-rate intelligences, essentially piggy-back off them because they can’t come up with the original / groundbreaking stuff on their own.
I understand that he’s mastered the use of capital letters and punctuation. Truly remarkable.
StG