Edward Frenkel
speaker
2,304 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2023
last heard Apr 2023
Edward Frenkel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
But what happened next surprised everybody.
The kind of patterns that he was able to observe, the kind of regularities that he was able to observe, which were quite surprising, were subsequently found in other areas of mathematics.
for example, in geometry, and eventually in quantum physics.
So in fact, Ed Whitten, who is kind of a dean of modern theoretical physicists, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well, got interested in this subject.
I describe in my book how it happened.
And he was instrumental in bridging the gap between these patterns found in physics and in geometry, finding kind of a superstratum, if you will, or a way to connect these two things, kind of a bridge between these two fields.
Subsequently, I collaborate with Witten on this, and this has been one of the major themes of my research.
I always found it interesting to connect things, to unite things.
When I was younger, I couldn't understand why, but I was always interested not in working in a specific field, but cutting across fields.
And then I would discover that, for instance, I took some people who know what happens in this field, but don't know what happens in the other field, or conversely.
And then I would find it imperative to go out and explain to them, to the different sides, what this is all about.
so that more people are aware of these hidden structures or these hidden parallels, if you will.
So that has been sort of a theme in my research.
And so I guess, you know, now I kind of understand more why it's kind of a balance, you know, like what we talked about earlier.
I would say what it suggests is that there is some hidden principles which we still don't understand.
My view is that we still don't know why.
that we can prove some instances of this correspondences and connections, but we still don't know the real underlying reasons, which means that there is a certain layer beneath the surface that we see now,
It is like, so the way I see it now is like this, that there is something three-dimensional like this bottle, but what we are seeing is this projection onto the table and the projection onto a wall.
And then we can map things from one projection to another.
And you say, oh my God, that's incredible.
Showing 1381–1400 of 2,304 · page 70 of 116
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