“Elegance requires that the number of defining equations be small. Five is better than ten, and one is better than five. On this score, one might facetiously say that String Theory is the ultimate epitome of elegance. With all the years that String Theory has been studied, no one has found even a single defining equation! The number at present count is zero. We know neither what the fundamental equations of the theory are nor even if it has any.”

— Leonard Susskind, book The Cosmic Landscape

[The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, 2008, Little, Brown, https://books.google.com/books?id=RIW9E1sOyxUC&q=epitome#v=snippet&q=epitome&f=false]

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Leonard Susskind5

American physicist 1940

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Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

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“The method of successive approximations is often applied to proving existence of solutions to various classes of functional equations; moreover, the proof of convergence of these approximations leans on the fact that the equation under study may be majorised by another equation of a simple kind. Similar proofs may be encountered in the theory of infinitely many simultaneous linear equations and in the theory of integral and differential equations. Consideration ofjkbni semiordered spaces and operations between them enables us to easily develop a complete theory of such functional equations in abstract form.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

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Source: Dept. of Speculation

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Joseph Polchinski Memories of a Theoretical Physicist

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“I think one has to regard it as a long term process. One has to remember that String theory, if you choose to date it from the Veneziano model, is already eighteen years old”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

"Edward Witten" interview, Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1992) ed. P.C.W. Davies, Julian Brown
Context: I think one has to regard it as a long term process. One has to remember that String theory, if you choose to date it from the Veneziano model, is already eighteen years old... that quantum electrodynamic theory towards which Planck was heading [in 1900], took fifty years to emerge.

“The second superstring revolution (1994-??) has brought non-perturbative string physics within reach. The key discoveries were the recognition of amazing and surprising "dualities." They have taught us that what we viewed previously as five theories is in fact five different perturbative expansions of a single underlying theory about five different points! It is now clear that there is a unique theory, though it may allow many different vacua…. Three different kinds of dualities, called S, T, and U have been identified."”

John Henry Schwarz (1941) American theoretical physicist

pp. 4–5

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Leonard Susskind5

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