Knots and Quantum Theory | Edward Witten, Charles Simonyi Professor

Edward Witten, Charles Simonyi Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study http://www.ias.edu/people/faculty-and-emeriti/witten A knot is more or less what you think it is—a tangled mess of string in ordinary three-dimensional space. In the twentieth century, mathematicians developed a rich and deep theory of knots. And surprisingly, as Edward Witten, Charles Simonyi Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, explains in this lecture, it turned out that many of the most interesting ideas about knots have their roots in quantum physics. More videos at http://video.ias.edu