Peter Woit
American physicist
Peter Woit (; born September 11, 1957) is a Latvian-American mathematician who works in twistor theory. He works in the mathematics department at Columbia University. A critic of string theory, Woit has published the book Not Even Wrong (2006) and writes a blog of the same name.
Career
Woit graduated in 1979 from Harvard University with bachelor's and master's degrees in physics. He obtained his PhD in particle physics from Princeton University in 1985, followed by postdoctoral work in theoretical physics at State University of New York at Stony Brook and mathematics at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley. He spent four years as an assistant professor at Columbia. He now holds a permanent position in the mathematics department, as a senior lecturer.
Woit is a U.S. citizen and also has a Latvian passport. His father was born in Riga and became exiled with his own parents at the beginning of the Soviet occupation of Latvia.
Criticism of string theory
Woit is critical of string theory on the grounds that it lacks testable predictions and is promoted with public money despite its failures so far, and has authored both scientific papers and popular polemics on this topic.
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