Lee Smolin
American theoretical physicist · United States · On the map · Scientists · Born 1955 · age 71
Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo, and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto.
Lee Smolin is read about 123 times a day, in 28 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026
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, We show that some known classical results have particularly simple derivations within the Ashtekar formalism. These include Witten's positive energy theorem...
The suggestion was that a positive energy proof for general relativity could be gotten by restricting supergravity to its bosonic sector, which is general relativity.
We seem to have an ingrained idea that if something is valuable, it exists outside of time.
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Smolin's 2006 book The Trouble with Physics criticized string theory's viability. He has made contributions to quantum gravity theory, in particular the approach known as loop quantum gravity. He advocates that the two primary approaches to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity and string theory, can be reconciled as different aspects of the same underlying theory. He also advocates an alternative view on space and time that he calls temporal naturalism. His research interests also include cosmology, elementary particle theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and theoretical biology.
