Not quite promptly at six o’clock on Saturday morning, two dozen scientists whose fields of study can’t be summarized in a sentence boarded a bus at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, and headed south, bound for the March for Science, in Washington, D.C. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” Ed Witten, the first and only theoretical physicist ever to win the Fields Medal, the Academy Award of mathematics, said. Witten, who is in his sixties, is tall even when seated and speaks in a measured, almost sheepish tone. He was reading a book about the First World War on his Kindle, a device that, he conceded, he hadn’t yet mastered. The sky, still pale, was cloudy, and the forecast did indeed call for rain. 查看全文>>