Talk:Brian Greene

message: What the heck. "His book The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (1999)...was a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize in nonfiction." and "His father, Alan Greene...later worked as a hunting coach."  I guess I'll change it. Neurotic Jacobin 15:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: lol

message: Why should an encyclopedia not be entertaining to a certain degree, as was e.g. the Encyclopedia Britannica in its former and first years ? I welcome all these contributions very much as they show that not all people fall for the self-promotion of some string guy who had results only on a mathematical field.  BG9123
I could not disagree more. How is Dr. Greene self promoting? He seems to simply be promoting science, something many seem to woefully misunderstandWillbennett2007 (talk) 12:25, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: science fiction

message: I read an article about Brian Greene and he is indeed a vegan. He became a vegetarian at a young age, but later became a vegan due to a talk or lecture he attended in New York.
=== Vegan as religion ===
can someone enlighten me by telling me since when is Veganism considered a "religion?" And if it is not, why is it labelled as his religion?
: A handful of vegans consider their brand of veganism to be religious because their personally-held vegan beliefs and practices are spiritual in nature, having to do with the sanctity of life or what have you. But the vast majority vegans consider veganism to be not a religion, but a philosophy or an ethic (even if it does tie in with their religious beliefs). Since the religious vegans are in the minority, it seems presumptuous to me to label all vegans as practicing a "religion." 70.184.72.38 01:43, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brian Green is a vegan. 

message: can someone enlighten me by telling me since when is Veganism considered a "religion?" And if it is not, why is it labelled as his religion?
: A handful of vegans consider their brand of veganism to be religious because their personally-held vegan beliefs and practices are spiritual in nature, having to do with the sanctity of life or what have you. But the vast majority vegans consider veganism to be not a religion, but a philosophy or an ethic (even if it does tie in with their religious beliefs). Since the religious vegans are in the minority, it seems presumptuous to me to label all vegans as practicing a "religion." 70.184.72.38 01:43, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vegan as religion 

message: I have attended many of his lectures and he is utterly a genius. His work on Calabi-Yau manifolds is impressive.
'As brilliant as Einstein.'
I second the notion.  Professor Greene is genius.  The light of both blazing knowledge and innate enlightenment as well as compassion, surrounds his marvelous and wondrous presence and mind. He maintains a great balance keeping his heart in this world, though his vision looks to the greater science and universe.  The latter is very difficult to do for most of us even when we dont have a clue about our ignorance. My personal preference is vegetarian which is why I started writing, but now I might just have to give up wools and silks.  Sacrifice makes the world and universes go 'round.  I attended Dr. greene's lecture and certainly would give anything to attend his classes.  Wouldnt everyone?
:How does writing two books qualify one as a genius? Sure, Greene did some good work on manifolds and strings, but none of it was earth shattering. He does not come close to Einstein in terms of his ability to decipher the inner workings of the universe. A smart guy, but let's not use the word "genius" too liberally here. Capacitor 04:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  You do know Einstein got a lot of his stuff from Poincaré, right?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.176.129 (talk) 10:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  writing two books is just what he has done to popularize science (and he has written more than two). Do a google scholar search on him. This will show you what other scientists think of his work (How often it is referenced in academic/scholarly papers).  I quite after 75 pages of listings.....I would say that qualifies as not only genius, but being a very prominent scientist.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Willbennett2007 (talk • contribs) 01:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

text: Yes, Brian Greene really is one of the world's foremost string theorists. Microtonal 05:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Says, who. I have no objection, i have reservations though about missing quotes and citation sources making many wikipedian articles sub standart (not that it would matter in this specific case.Slicky 20:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether Greene is a genius or not cannot be easily decided. However, his role within the theoretical physics community can actually be measured through the ranking in citations his papers receive. If you look up the last (5-year) ranking of top-cited theory authors at the Stanford University SPIRES database, you'll find that he ranks no. 622. That is a far cry from being foremost, and also tells you he is not be described as one of the "fathers of mirror symmetry" as done in Wikipedia, for that would have placed him much higher in this list. He is certainly foremost in publicizing string theory, but that's it! I therefore advocate to change foremost to "one of the best-known" or something. N.Nahber 07:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I've made this change. To further back up my argument, I mention that unlike Witten, M. Green, Susskind and others B. Greene is not among the other SPIRES list that ranks all-time topcited theory authors.N.Nahber 08:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

text: But remember, Brian and Ed and also the mud itself are supposed to really be just an accumulation of these little vibrating strings....Lestrade 12:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: David Hartley (philosopher) was the smartest man ever back in 1749 when he claimed that our mental operations were really the vibrations of little strings. Remember him?Lestrade 13:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Omigod. I'm like, you know, he's so, like, smart, and, like, omigod!Lestrade 18:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

text: He was in the audience of a lecture that I attended this past summer and he was joined by what I presume was his wife and kid. — goethean ॐ 18:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I attended an interview with Greene sponsored by the Smithsonian conducted by Michael Turner in March, 2005.  Turner asked about Greene's family, and he said he has a daughter and has lived with her mother for years, but that they are not married. RossPatterson 21:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

text: It isn't at all clear who that's directed to, so I guess in fact it's not! :-) RossPatterson 21:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

text: He's not gay?--Loodog 02:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Tracy is a unisexual name, e.g. Tracy Hickman, but I guess not in this case. –Pomte 07:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Brian Greene is a genius

message: Yes, cutting to the chase...the article looks fine.  Add veganism if a source can be cited.  Yes, not as important as string theory, but interesting.  I'm going to remove the tag unless anyone has a specific section that needs cleaning (in which case the tag should be moved to a specific section instead of the whole article) or can change it to a more specific tag. --In Defense of the Artist 00:42, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup?

message: He was mentioned on XKCD.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.25.39.186 (talk) 04:27, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In b4 semiprotect? Tar7arus (talk) 14:36, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: How Bad?

message: Does anyone else think the intro is a little too heavy on jargon?
"Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. "
This part strikes me as bad for the introduction part.  Maybe it would be better to just cut it back to something like this, if it makes sense?  (I'm not a physicist so please correct me If i cut it down badly)
"Greene is known for his work on mirror symmetry, and topology in string theory."
Details of his work appear in the Research section, I think it's fine to have this level of detail in a section, just not in the introduction to a man who is going to be looked up by average simpletons like me, it gave me quite a shock to be thrown in the deep end like that right away.
Gdfgrsegyjhcc (talk) 18:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: I propose changing the current Known For (i.e. String theory, The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos) to Popularization of Physics. Is there anything he is WELL known for in the physics community? Hamsterlopithecus (talk) 23:04, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Known For 

message: As a skeptic of string theory, I admit that I share concerns of some here regarding String Theory's claims of higher dimensions, especially considering that there are so many models for these higher dimensions that though elements of string theory are falsifiable, and in fact some have been falsified by the LHC (namely, the models predicting micro-blackholes). So I will admit, I do actually have some concerns that potentially, Mr. Greene may be communicating topics which are purely mathematical at best and unfalsifiable/superfluous at worst.
That being said, while I agree with some of the cricitisms on this talk page, I am also concerned that these arguments are not being properly referenced. So to those who are claiming Mr. Greene is duping the public on scientific issues, I'm wondering if someone could bring some reliable third party sources to bear (peer-reviewed or otherwise) that criticize Mr Greene's work specifically. For example, the journal Nature and other scientific journals often publish book reviews on books published in a related field. If someone could find one a critical review such as that, I would be all for creating a criticism section in the encyclopedia entry just to make this article appear less like Mr. Greene is self-promoting.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thepractitioner333 (talk • contribs) 01:20, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Sourcing Concerns

message: Extreme violations of BLP, and nothing of value or relevance to improving the article. This whole page should be trashed. -- Jibal (talk) 16:44, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: this page is appalling

message: Apparently veganism isnt a choice because this guy believes everything is preplanned. what an absolute ignorant man 73.160.213.63 (talk) 23:06, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, according to the behaviour of the atoms in your brain you would say that, I guess...! JezGrove (talk) 23:10, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  vegetarian/vegan/ whatever