Antony Garrett Lisi

Lisi was born in Los Angeles and raised in San Diego, California,[8] where he learned to surf.[9] Lisi went on to receive two B.S. degrees with highest honors in physics and mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1991. Lisi received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego, in 1999.[10] After his Ph.D., Lisi left academia, expressing dissatisfaction with the state of theoretical physics.[11]

Lisi volunteered as a staff member at a local Sudbury school on Maui, taught physics classes at University of Hawaii – Maui College, worked on his physics research, and surfed.[12]

In July 2006, Lisi was awarded an FQXi grant to conduct research in quantum mechanics and unification.[13] In June 2007, Lisi realized that the algebraic structure he had constructed in an attempt to unify the standard model of particle physics with general relativity partially matched part of the algebraic structure of the E₈ Lie group.[14][15] In July 2007, Lisi traveled to the inaugural FQXi conference in Reykjavík, Iceland, to give several academic talks.[12]

Lisi's paper, "An exceptionally simple theory of everything",[16] was posted to the arXiv on 6 November 2007. His theory was discussed on major physics blogs[9] and his theory and personal history were reported by media sources in several countries.[17][18][19] Lisi presented his theory at the TED Conference on 28 February 2008,[20] and has since presented several academic talks and colloquia.[21] In July 2010, mathematicians and physicists met with Lisi while at the Banff International Research Station in Alberta, Canada, to discuss his theory.[22]

In July 2009, at a FQXi conference in the Azores, Lisi made a public bet with Frank Wilczek that superparticles would not be detected by 8 July 2015.[23] After a one-year extension to allow for more data collection from the Large Hadron Collider, Frank Wilczek conceded the superparticle bet to Lisi in 2016.[24]

On 8 May 2006, in an arXiv preprint, "Quantum mechanics from a universal action reservoir,"[25] Lisi proposed that the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics can be derived from information theory and the existence of a universal action reservoir.[26]

Lisi's main work in theoretical physics is his Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything. It proposes a unified field theory combining a grand unification theory of particle physics with Albert Einstein's general relativistic description of gravitation, using the largest simple exceptional Lie algebra, E₈.[16][27] Lisi stated that gravity, the standard model bosons and fermions can be unified as parts of an E₈ superconnection. The theory, called E8 Theory, also predicts the existence of many new particles.[28] He then designed a web application, the Elementary Particle Explorer,[29] for visualizing the charge structure of the elementary particles in the standard model, in grand unified theories, and in E8 Theory.

Lisi's theory has been extensively criticized in the scientific community.[5][6][7] He has responded to this criticism, acknowledging that the theory is incomplete. In a Scientific American post, Lisi stated, "(the 3 generation) ... issue remains the most significant problem, and until it is solved the theory is not complete and cannot be considered much more than a speculative proposal. Without fully describing how the three generations of fermions work, the theory and all predictions from it remain tenuous."[30]

In June 2010 Lisi posted "An explicit embedding of gravity and the Standard Model in E8",[31] and in 2015 an update and generalization, "Lie group cosmology".[32]

Garrett Lisi surfing Ho'okipa, Maui, on January 13, 2012