Brian Greene
Brian Greene
Brian Randolph Greeneis an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds. He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 February 1963
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The funny thing is, I sometimes get the impression that some people outside of the field think that there's some element of security that we have in working on a theory that hasn't made any predictions that can be proven false. In a sense, we're working on something unfalsifiable.
I think the appropriate response for a physicist is: 'I do not find the concept of God very interesting, because I cannot test it.'
What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.
There may have been many big bangs, one of which created our universe. The other bangs created other universes.
We know that if supersymmetric particles exist, they must be very heavy; otherwise we would have spotted them by now.
Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.
As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work - we begin life as little scientists.
I do feel strongly that string theory is our best hope for making progress at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics.
The math of quantum mechanics and the math of general relativity, when they confront one another, they are ferocious antagonists and the equations don't work.