[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 161 (Friday, November 7, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E2282]]
                        TRIBUTE TO EDWARD WITTEN

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. RUSH D. HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, November 7, 2003

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, today at the White House, Edward Witten was 
awarded the National Medal of Science Award, the nation's highest 
science and engineering honor.
  The presidential medal is the nation's highest honor for researchers 
who make major impacts in fields of science and engineering through 
career-long, ground-breaking achievements. The medal, established by 
Congress in 1959, also recognizes contributions to innovation, industry 
or education.
  Edward Witten, the Charles Simonyi Professor of Physics at the 
Institute for Advanced Study, received the award ``for his leadership 
role in advancing a broad range of topics in theoretical physics, 
including attempts to understand the fundamental forces of nature 
through string theory; and his unparalleled inspiration in using 
insights from physics to unify apparently disparate mathematical 
areas.'' Professor Witten may be best known as the world leader in 
``string theory,'' an attempt by physicists to describe in one unified 
way all the known forces of nature, as well as to understand nature at 
the most basic level. The combination of the four fundamental forces 
(electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational) in one theoretical 
framework was a goal sought, but unattained by Albert Einstein. The 
concept underlying string theory is to replace the usual point-like 
representation of fundamental particles with vanishingly small 
vibrating strings. This resolves an incompatibility between quantum 
mechanics and general relativity, which is the premier challenge of 
theoretical physics. Dr. Witten's original contributions and incisive 
surveys have set the agenda for many developments, such as the progress 
in ``dualities,'' which suggest that all known string theories are 
related.
  Dr. Witten's earliest papers produced advances in quantum 
chromodynamics (QCD), a theory that describes the interactions among 
the fundamental particles (quarks and gluons) that make up all nuclei. 
In particular, he solved the problem of expressing radioactive 
corrections arising from heavy particles in terms of effective light 
quarks. In other early work, he understood how to combine properties of 
the Dirac equation with those of the Riemann curvature tensor, to get a 
new formula for the gravitational energy, and to give a new and direct 
proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity. He also 
discovered new solutions of the equations of C.N. Yang and Robert 
Mills, and realized their importance for physics.
  Dr. Witten discovered many relations between ``supersymmetric quantum 
theory'' and geometry. Supersymmetry lies at the basis of a picture of 
fundamental particles studied at the Fermilab Tevatron, and soon at the 
Large Hadron Collider under construction at CERN. Dr. Witten showed 
that a mathematical theory of Michael Atiyah and I.M. Singer parallels 
supersymmetry and plays a central role in particle physics. He applied 
this concept to the study of nonperturbative supersymmetry breaking. He 
used this same concept to produce a new derivation of a fundamental 
mathematical theory of Marston Morse.
  One of Dr. Witten's deepest mathematical insights arose from his 
glimpsing the relation between the physics of gauge theory and the 
mathematics of knots. This work has led to a revolution in mathematics, 
including the understanding of the classification of higher dimensional 
spaces. For this work, Dr. Witten became the only theoretical physicist 
ever to receive the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in pure 
mathematics. Conversely, Dr. Witten was broadly responsible for the 
demonstration that algebraic geometry and topology, core disciplines of 
modern mathematics, hold the key to understanding the deepest 
properties of string theory and gauge field theory.
  Dr. Witten is as clear and engaging a speaker as he is a creative and 
powerful theorist I find it especially commendable that he also is an 
effective thinker and worker for peace and social justice in the Middle 
East and the world.
  Dr. Witten, who has been on the Faculty of the Institute for Advanced 
Study since 1987, is the recipient of a 1982 MacArthur Fellowship; the 
1985 Einstein Medal from the Einstein Society of Berne, Switzerland; 
the 1985 Dirac Medal from the International Center for Theoretical 
Physics; the 1990 Fields Medal; and numerous other awards. He is a 
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National 
Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society, and an 
associate member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. Ed Witten is a 
good friend of mine, and I am pleased to congratulate him on his award, 
and I thank him for the contribution he has made to improve our 
knowledge and understanding.

                          ____________________