{"id":177,"date":"2005-04-04T21:46:38","date_gmt":"2005-04-05T01:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=177"},"modified":"2005-04-04T21:46:38","modified_gmt":"2005-04-05T01:46:38","slug":"witten-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=177","title":{"rendered":"Witten in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Edward Witten is in Canada this week, giving a <A href=\"http:\/\/www.fields.utoronto.ca\/programs\/scientific\/04-05\/string-theory\/dls\/witten.html\">series of lectures<\/A> at the <A href=\"http:\/\/www.fields.utoronto.ca\/\">Fields Institute<\/A>, the mathematics institute at the University of Toronto.  He&#8217;s also giving a <A href=\"http:\/\/www.perimeterinstitute.ca\/activities\/community\/generalpublic\/publiclectures.php\">public lecture<\/A> at the <A href=\"http:\/\/www.perimeterinstitute.ca\">Perimeter Institute<\/A> in Waterloo.<\/p>\n<p>The first of his lectures in Toronto, on the topic of <A href=\"http:\/\/www.fields.utoronto.ca\/audio\/04-05\/distinguished_lectures\/witten\/\">Relativistic Scattering Theory<\/A> is now available on-line.  It&#8217;s a nice, simple explanation of scattering theory, using the &#8220;geometric quantization&#8221; point of view about quantum field theory. For a quantum theory of a real scalar field, one chooses a complex structure on the space of solutions of the free field equation, making this a priori symplectic infinite dimensional manifold actually a Kahler manifold.  Witten&#8217;s next two lectures in Toronto will be on &#8220;Gauge Symmetry Breaking&#8221; and &#8220;The Quantum Hall Effect&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m curious what he&#8217;ll be promoting in the public event at Perimeter on Wednesday.  Will it be string theory?  Will anyone ask him about the appalling nonsense his fellow string theorists were spouting there all <A href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/blog\/archives\/000174.html\">last week<\/A>?.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edward Witten is in Canada this week, giving a series of lectures at the Fields Institute, the mathematics institute at the University of Toronto. He&#8217;s also giving a public lecture at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo. The first of his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=177\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}