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Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, public speaker, podcast host, and the former managing director of Thiel Capital. Weinstein was the founder and principal of the Natron Group and has held research positions in the mathematics, physics, and economics departments at MIT, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard, and Oxford University (visiting research fellow in the mathematics department).
Weinstein was born into a Jewish family. He is married to Pia Malaney (who is also an economist) and is the brother of Bret Weinstein (a well-known biologist). He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and completed his PhD at Harvard University in 1992. In 2013, he delivered the Special Simonyi Lectures at Oxford University, putting forth a theory he termed “Geometric Unity” to unify the twin geometries (Riemannian and Ehresmannian) thought to ground the two most fundamental physical theories (general relativity and the so-called standard model of particle theory, respectively). Within economics, Weinstein has focused on a variety of topics with an emphasis on foundations. In the early 1990s, he introduced Gauge Theoretic methods into neo-classical theory with co-author Pia Malaney.
He is known for speaking and writing on a range of topics, including gauge theory, immigration, the market for elite labor, management of financial risk, and incentivizing risk-taking behavior in scientific disciplines. In July 2019, Weinstein started a podcast called The Portal. Weinstein has appeared on other podcasts, including The Joe Rogan Experience, The Rubin Report, The Ben Shapiro Show, and Making Sense with Sam Harris. He is also a frequent contributor to Edge.org. Eric Weinstein is credited with coming up with the term "intellectual dark web" while being interviewed by Sam Harris on episode 112 of Sam Harris's Waking Up Podcast (now called Making Sense). Weinstein first used the term to describe intellectuals who are considered "toxic" by the mainstream media but have still managed to become prominent figures online through their controversial and heterodox thinking.
Eric Weinstein attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1982 to 1985, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts and a master of arts combined degree in mathematics. During his time at the University of Pennsylvania, he achieved the following honorary titles: university scholar, magna cum laude, and departmental honors, and he was part of the Pi Mu Epsilon Honor Society.
Three years after completing his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, Eric Weinstein began a PhD program at Harvard University. He attended Harvard from 1985 to 1992 and graduated with a PhD in mathematical physics, specializing in gauge theory, differential geometry, and exceptional algebra. His dissertation for his PhD thesis is titled "Extension of Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations Across the 8th Dimension."
From 1991 to 1993, Eric Weinstein was a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Ranch Institute of Physics and the Einstein Institute of Mathematics. During his time at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Weinstein researched higher dimensional elliptic gauge theories and related topics. He also was a co-organizer of the Lie Groups and Physics seminar.
After finishing his post-doctoral studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Eric Weinstein moved back to Cambridge, Massachusetts as an instructor and National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow in the department of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During his time at MIT, he pursued research into mathematical physics, intertemporal economics, scientific labor markets, and differential geometry.
Eric Weinstein has served as a visiting research fellow at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University.
A mathematician named Marcus du Sautoy invited Eric Weinstein to give a lecture at Oxford University on his theory of the universe. Du Sautoy and Weinstein met each other prior to the lecture invitation in the 1990s, during their time at the Hebrew University as postdoctoral mathematical students. On May 23, 2013, Weinstein gave his two-hour lecture, titled "Geometric Unity," at Oxford University in the Clarendon Laboratory. There were few physicists in attendance for reasons outside of Weinstein's control. He gave a repeat lecture to get his ideas in front of more physicists at Oxford University on May 31, 2013. After his lecture, Weinstein did not offer any published scientific papers or equations supporting his "Geometric Unity" theory but did make claims about how his theory can potentially solve difficult unsolved issues facing the physics community regarding dark, matter, dark energy, and quantum gravity.
His theory is based on the naturally occurring geometric symmetry found in the universe and mathematical equations. Weinstein theorizes we live in a fourteen-dimensional universe consisting of three dimensions of space plus one for time. Weinstein says you get the extra dimensions (from 4 to 14) by "extending the mathematics of the original four, which appear in general relativity as the diagonal entries in a four-by-four matrix." Weinstein states that his theory builds on the work of famous physicists, such as Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, and Chen Ning Yang.
The principal authors of all three of our most basic equations subscribe to the aesthetic school, while the rest of the profession had chased the consequence of beauty with adherence to data. For example, Dirac predicted the existence of the positron based on the symmetries of his equation describing the electron. He was led by the beauty of the mathematics, not the data at the time, which said such a thing did not exist.
Weinstein's theory of Geometric Unity also predicts the existence of new particles and their mirror particles, which could be the particles that make it possible to accurately account for dark matter, according to Weinstein. A physicist at the University of Oxford named Joseph Conlon commented on Weinstein's new particles not being discovered by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider by publicly stating "The trouble is that we should already have seen some of Weinstein's new particles if they exist."
Eric Weinstein believes the academic community responded poorly to his Geometric Unity lecture because they "subscribe to a rubric, which is "paper or it didn't happen. In other words, 'put up or shut up' give us a paper or it didn't happen." When commenting on why a paper is not yet published, Weinstein said the following on episode #1320 of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast:
Because my trajectory through math and physics was very unusual. I have a very low trust of the academic community. I support them, as you can tell, you know I 'm extolling the virtues of science. But I was subjected to a situation in graduate school... You know I'm probably the only person you have ever met that holds a Ph.D that was not allowed to attend his own thesis defence.
Eric Weinstein was the managing director of Thiel Capital between 2013 and 2022.
In 2001, Eric Weinstein became the head of research at AdKap LLC and also became a consultant-at-large for Capital Market Risk Advisors to analyze transparency problems associated with hedge funds with illiquid exposure.
From 2000 to 2002, Eric Weinstein acted as an external collaborator for the United Nations and the International Labor Office. He proposed a restructuring of Kuwait's foreign worker program, which is still pending adoption by the U.N. Migrant division, to a 'permit market' model designed to solve several problems associated with migrants outnumbering citizens in Kuwait.
On July 3, 2019, Eric Weinstein announced his podcast called The Portal on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Forty episodes of The Portal were produced, with the final episode posted in January 2020.
Eric Weinstein publicly announces his podcast called The Portal, where its name comes from, and the motivation behind the podcast.
