Tom Mainiero

A Brief History of Witten

Lactose intolerant Ed Witten consumes milk daily in an attempt to reduce his citation to flatulence ratio.

During excursions into the depths of his behind, Edward Witten effortlessly stumbles upon nuggets of knowledge; bringing the process of self-discovery one step closer to mundanity. Half-man, part Mr. Rogers, Ed Witten is not from another planet but mostly from the chilling depths of space: beaming himself down to our Earthly presence through a projection of his brain's self-projection.

The lift of this configuration to M-theory was deemed inappropriate for children.

Witten demonstrating a configuration of intersecting NS5 and D4 branes to a class of 3rd grade students.

His journey is said to begin when he was just a small man-child exiting the womb manufactured by his own sentience: baffling doctors when they discovered his umbilical cord was not the unknot. At the age of 6 minutes, bored with his small perspective on life, Witten decided to grow to the size of what can only be described as an adult-sized toddler. When school children dared him to pick on another of his own stature, he chose to battle big-bird in an episode brought to you by M-theory-- but this was not the end of his of his avian odium, those foul fowl. In 1988 when the world was still preoccupied with tight leather pants and enormous hair, Donaldson duck had finish constructing his doomsday device, bringing the world one step closer to total classification of smooth 4-manifolds. Witten realized the only way to save the planet was to abide by the recent Cold War doctrine of Unusually Obscured Constructions.

Cyborg-Witten Theory is mankind's last line of defense in the war with the machines.

In a twist of supercharges, Witten unleashed a new dawn of cybernetic technology so powerful that even the scrawniest of academic magicians could dominate Donaldson's diabolical doings. Some say Witten was inspired by "The Terminator", others say it was the other way around: he inspired "The Terminator"; believing Witten's wordline is a closed-time-like curve, but the truth is he was inspired by "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" which is now widely agreed on to be the best movie in the Terminator series.

A living contradiction, Ed Witten was a firm supporter of the Alpha Betas. After this photo was taken, however, he had a change of heart and his efforts during the Greek Wars allowed the Tri-Lambs to seize the day.

Soon thereafter, Witten became weary of his increasing fame and joined the traveling circus in attempt to blend in with the other great elephants of his time: but he chose to forget the lesson that an elephant never rests. In the mid-90's, after an extraordinarily long performance by the bearded woman, the world was shocked to discover Witten's supergravity strength was more than just a crowd pleaser when he lifted five superstring theories straight into 11-dimensional spacetime. The Duality bros. juggling act was outshone by orders of magnitude. His unprecedented display of power inspired physicists and circus performers from around the world to fall off the wagon, promoting the liver disease that fueled the careers of doctoral students during the second superstring revolution. In the diaper-changing decision inspired by the birth of his new daughter Era, Witten accepted his position as our academic guardian; perhaps to the dismay of young teenagers with dreams of tenure and tattoos. To this day it is known where Witten lives, but few visit. Some prefer to imagine him as a smooth-talking, disembodied space-voice; the rest just close their eyes, conjecturing images of him in the fields of Langlands, roasting Taub-NUTs by the open fire.