Eric Weinstein
American financial executive (born 1965)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric Ross Weinstein (/ˈwaɪnstaɪn/; born October 26, 1965[2]) is an American investor and financial executive.[3] As of 2021[update], he was managing director for the American venture capital firm Thiel Capital.[4] Weinstein has hosted a podcast called The Portal, coined the term "intellectual dark web", and has proposed a theory of everything called "Geometric Unity" that has largely been ignored or met with skepticism in the scientific community.[5][6]
October 26, 1965
Harvard University (PhD)
Eric Weinstein | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | Eric Ross Weinstein October 26, 1965 |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (BA, MA) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Occupations | Venture capital fund manager, podcast host |
| Known for | Intellectual dark web |
| Spouse | Pia Malaney[1] |
| Relatives | Bret Weinstein (brother) |
| Website | ericweinstein |
Education
Weinstein studied mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1985.[7][8]
Weinstein received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1992 under the supervision of Raoul Bott.[9][10] In his dissertation, "Extension of Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations Across the Eighth Dimension", Weinstein showed that the self-dual Yang–Mills equations were not peculiar to dimension four and admitted generalizations to higher dimensions.[11]
Career
Finance
In 2013, Weinstein was working as an economist and consultant at the Natron Group, a New York City–based hedge fund.[5][6][12][3] As of 2021,[update] Weinstein is the managing director for Thiel Capital, a venture capital firm founded by American financier Peter Thiel that invests in technology and life sciences–related companies.[3][4][13][1]
Geometric Unity
In May 2013, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy invited Weinstein to give a lecture at Oxford University's Clarendon Laboratory on a theory called "Geometric Unity";[5] Sautoy also wrote an overview for The Guardian newspaper.[6] Physicists David Kaplan and Jim al-Khalili as well as Joseph Conlon of Oxford expressed skepticism.[5] Physicists criticized Weinstein and du Sautoy for not publishing any equations related to the theory, which is a normal part of scholarly peer review.[5][3][6][14] Science writer Jennifer Ouellette criticized the favorable coverage given to the theory by The Guardian, arguing that experts could not properly evaluate Weinstein's ideas without a published paper.[15]
In April 2021, Weinstein self-published a paper on Geometric Unity, stating that it was a "work of entertainment" and that he was "not a physicist".[3] Cosmologist Richard Easther of the University of Auckland said Weinstein's theory has had "no visible impact" and "looked massively undercooked after the buildup it got from du Sautoy".[3] Timothy Nguyen, whose PhD thesis intersects with Weinstein's work, said what Weinstein has presented so far has "gaps, both mathematical and physical in origin" that "jeopardize Geometric Unity as a well-defined theory, much less one that is a candidate for a theory of everything".[3]
Weinstein is a regular guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.[relevant?] Science writer Dan Kagan-Kans has described the resentment of scientific authority expounded by Weinstein and other contemporary podcasters as "conspiracy physics".[16]
Other ventures
Weinstein is the host of a podcast called The Portal.[17] As of 2024,[update] he is a member of the research team on The Galileo Project, founded by astrophysicist Avi Loeb to investigate potential signs of extraterrestrial technology.[18][19]
Weinstein coined the term "intellectual dark web", later popularized by Bari Weiss, an opinion editor for The New York Times. The term has been applied to a loose network of public figures opposed to left-wing identity politics and political correctness.[20]
