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Lee Smolin

Founding & Senior Faculty Member, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Lee attended Harvard University for graduate school receiving a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1979.  He held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, The Institute for Theoretical Physics (now KITP) in Santa Barbara and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. This was followed by faculty positions at Yale, Syracuse and Penn State Universities, where he helped to found the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry.   In September of 2001 he moved to Canada to be a founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where he has been ever since.  

Lee's main contributions to research are so far to the field of quantum gravity. He was, with Abhay Ashtekar and Carlo Rovelli,  a founder of the approach known as loop quantum gravity, but he has contributed to other approaches including string theory and causal dynamical triangulations.  He is also known for proposing the notion of the landscape of theories, based on his application of Darwinian methods to Cosmology.  He has contributed also to the  foundations of quantum mechanics, elementary particle physics and theoretical biology.  He also has a strong interest in philosophy and his three books, Life of the Cosmos, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity and The Trouble with Physics are in part philosophical explorations of issues raised by contemporary physics.

 

 
Principles of the Open Future
Lee Smolin: As long as people of faith respect the facts and the deductions of science we should be respectful of their faith and their search for a faith.
Math is Not a Mirror of Nature
Lee Smolin: I used to think that my job as a physicist was this kind of mystical transcendent undertaking to transcend the daily reality and experience of the world and discover this timeless representation of the world where the truth really was.
News Flash: Time is Real
This is to counterpose the picture which is developed in physics from Galileo and Newton and Descartes down to the present quantum cosmologists. 
How We Confuse Time and Space
Einstein is quoted as saying, “We physicists, we who understand science know that the distinction between past, present and future’s an illusion.”
There is No Scientific Method
Science works because scientists form communities and traditions based not on a common set of methods, but a common set of ethical principles.