Today, a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded to Sergio Ferrara, Dan Freedman and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen for the invention of supergravity in 1976. Each of them will receive 3 million US$. @brkthroughprize
-
Show this thread
-
Replying to @skdh @brkthroughprize
I remember Dan Freedman looking sort of neglected in his office at the end of the hallways on the top floor of the MIT math department - the applied floor - so I'm happy to hear his work is being honored, even though supergravity could be a wrong turn in physics. It's good math.
1 reply 2 retweets 43 likes -
Hey John, Why do you think the SUSY/SUGRA math was there to be found if the physical world isn’t using it? Does it connect deeply elsewhere? The physics argument has always been that it must get used physically because it would be too weird to exist and not to be made use of. E
2 replies 1 retweet 9 likes -
You could ask that same question about literally any piece of math. How about p-Adic numbers, just to pick a completely random example? Why not postulate the world is fundamentally built on p-Adic numbers. Let's give someone a prize for that idea.
1 reply 2 retweets 8 likes -
We do! Just not a physics prize.
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
If there is in fact a prize for this, it ought long ago to have gone to Kazuya Kato.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.