The Holographic Universe

15 people, 46 sourced connections

The same people and connections as the diagram, in era order.

1. Albert Einstein

   1915 · General relativity · deep in the bulk

   General relativity, and both halves of ER = EPR: the 1935 wormhole paper and the 1935 entanglement paper.

   • Leo Szilardcoauthor1939

     Einstein wrote the August 2, 1939 letter to President Roosevelt with Szilard’s help, and signed it.

     Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Manhattan Project history Also on this site: /founder-files/szilard

   • Enrico Fermiidea lineage1939

     Connects through the 1939 letter to Roosevelt: the letter Einstein signed opens by citing recent work on uranium by Fermi and Szilard. It is a citation, not joint work.

     Source: Einstein to Roosevelt, August 2, 1939 (MIT transcription) · U.S. Department of Energy, the letter Outside source

   • Richard Feynmanattended talk1940

     Einstein, at the Institute, came by special invitation to graduate student Feynman’s first Princeton physics colloquium, probably in late 1940.

     Source: T. Sauer, Remarks on the Origin of Path Integration: Einstein and Feynman Outside source

   • Stephen Hawkingidea lineage1970

     Connects through general relativity: Hawking and Penrose’s 1970 theorem shows that, under broad conditions, Einstein’s theory leads to spacetime singularities.

     Source: Hawking and Penrose, The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology Outside source

   • Juan Maldacenaidea lineage2013

     Connects through ER = EPR: Maldacena and Susskind proposed that Einstein’s two 1935 ideas, the Einstein–Rosen bridge and the EPR pair, describe the same thing.

     Source: arXiv:1306.0533, Cool horizons for entangled black holes Also on this site: /founder-files/maldacena

   The Relativity of SimultaneityGravity from EntropyWatch: Real speech by Albert Einstein: his voice (video) ↗

2. Enrico Fermi

   1942 · Chicago Pile-1 · deep in the bulk

   Nobel laureate (1938) who led the first self-sustaining chain reaction in 1942; the order-of-magnitude Fermi estimate carries his name.

   • Albert Einsteinidea lineage1939

     Connects through the 1939 letter to Roosevelt: the letter Einstein signed opens by citing recent work on uranium by Fermi and Szilard. It is a citation, not joint work.

     Source: Einstein to Roosevelt, August 2, 1939 (MIT transcription) · U.S. Department of Energy, the letter Outside source

   • Leo Szilardcoauthor1939

     Coauthors, with Herbert Anderson, of Neutron Production and Absorption in Uranium, written at Columbia in 1939.

     Source: Phys. Rev. 56, 284 (1939) Outside source

   • Richard Feynmansame place1944

     Both worked at wartime Los Alamos: Feynman led a group in the Theoretical Division from 1943, and Fermi moved there in September 1944 to head F Division.

     Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Enrico Fermi · U.S. Department of Energy, Richard Feynman Outside source

   • Robert Hofstadteridea lineage1956

     Connects through a unit: in his 1956 review of electron scattering, Hofstadter named the femtometre, the length scale of the nucleus, the fermi.

     Source: Hofstadter, Rev. Mod. Phys. 28, 214 (naming as reported by Wikipedia) · Wikipedia: Femtometre Outside source

   • Jared Kaplanidea lineage2020

     Connects through a method: Kaplan’s 2020 lecture compares training compute with the human brain by Fermi estimate, the order-of-magnitude reasoning that carries Fermi’s name. The two never overlapped.

     Source: Kaplan FounderFile, § 03 The Biological Benchmark Also on this site: /founder-files/kaplan

   Leo Szilard and the chain reactionJared Kaplan’s Fermi estimate of the brainWatch: The World of Enrico Fermi (1970) (video) ↗

3. Richard Feynman

   1948 · The path-integral formulation · deep in the bulk

   Path integrals and the diagrams that carry his name; the calculating style later physicists took into other fields.

   • Albert Einsteinattended talk1940

     Einstein, at the Institute, came by special invitation to graduate student Feynman’s first Princeton physics colloquium, probably in late 1940.

     Source: T. Sauer, Remarks on the Origin of Path Integration: Einstein and Feynman Outside source

   • Enrico Fermisame place1944

     Both worked at wartime Los Alamos: Feynman led a group in the Theoretical Division from 1943, and Fermi moved there in September 1944 to head F Division.

     Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Enrico Fermi · U.S. Department of Energy, Richard Feynman Outside source

   • Stephen Hawkingidea lineage1983

     Connects through the path integral: Hartle and Hawking’s Wave Function of the Universe gives the ground state of a closed universe as a path integral over geometries, Feynman’s method applied to spacetime.

     Source: Hartle and Hawking, Phys. Rev. D 28, 2960 Outside source

   • Nima Arkani-Hamedidea lineage2013

     Connects by contrast: The Amplituhedron starts from the observation that scattering amplitudes have a simplicity that Feynman diagrams hide, and looks for a formulation without them.

     Source: arXiv:1312.2007 Outside source

   • Daniel Robertsidea lineage2021

     Connects through method: The Principles of Deep Learning Theory treats neural networks with the perturbative field-theory toolkit, and its first and last chapters open with epigraphs about Feynman. The book itself draws no Feynman diagrams.

     Source: arXiv:2106.10165 Outside source

   Ethan Dyer: Feynman rules for wide networksArmchair PhysicsWatch: Messenger Lectures at Cornell, The Character of Physical Law, Part 1: The Law of Gravitation (video) ↗

4. Robert Hofstadter

   1956 · Electron Scattering and Nuclear Structure · deep in the bulk

   Measured the size and shape of nuclei and of the proton by scattering electrons off them at Stanford; Nobel Prize in Physics, 1961.

   • Enrico Fermiidea lineage1956

     Connects through a unit: in his 1956 review of electron scattering, Hofstadter named the femtometre, the length scale of the nucleus, the fermi.

     Source: Hofstadter, Rev. Mod. Phys. 28, 214 (naming as reported by Wikipedia) · Wikipedia: Femtometre Outside source

   • Leonard Susskindsame place1979

     Both were physics professors at Stanford: Hofstadter taught there from 1950 to 1985, and Susskind joined in 1979.

     Source: Nobel Prize biography of Hofstadter · Wikipedia: Robert Hofstadter · Wikipedia: Leonard Susskind Outside source

   Watch: Robert Hofstadter: All That Jazz (video) ↗

5. Stephen Hawking

   1974 · Black hole explosions? · deep in the bulk

   Showed that black holes radiate and have a temperature, which set the information problem that holography was later used to answer.

   • Albert Einsteinidea lineage1970

     Connects through general relativity: Hawking and Penrose’s 1970 theorem shows that, under broad conditions, Einstein’s theory leads to spacetime singularities.

     Source: Hawking and Penrose, The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology Outside source

   • Richard Feynmanidea lineage1983

     Connects through the path integral: Hartle and Hawking’s Wave Function of the Universe gives the ground state of a closed universe as a path integral over geometries, Feynman’s method applied to spacetime.

     Source: Hartle and Hawking, Phys. Rev. D 28, 2960 Outside source

   • Leonard Susskindidea lineage1993

     Connects through the black hole information problem: Hawking argued that an evaporating black hole destroys information, and Susskind’s black hole complementarity starts from the postulate that quantum theory stays valid.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/9306069, The Stretched Horizon and Black Hole Complementarity · Hawking, Breakdown of predictability in gravitational collapse (1976) Outside source

   • Juan Maldacenaidea lineage2005

     Connects through Hawking’s 2005 paper Information Loss in Black Holes, which argues information is preserved and finds the question well posed only in asymptotically AdS spacetimes, the setting of Maldacena’s correspondence.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/0507171, Information Loss in Black Holes Outside source

   • Sabrina Pasterskiidea lineage2016

     Connects through a citation: Soft Hair on Black Holes, by Hawking, Perry and Strominger, cites Pasterski’s papers on gravitational and electromagnetic memory.

     Source: arXiv:1601.00921, Soft Hair on Black Holes (reference list) · arXiv:1502.06120, New Gravitational Memories · arXiv:1505.00716, Asymptotic Symmetries and Electromagnetic Memory Also on this site: /founder-files/pasterski

   Sabrina Pasterski, whose memory papers he citedWatch: Stephen Hawking: Quantum Black Holes (video) ↗

6. Leonard Susskind

   1994 · The World as a Hologram · middle depth

   Set out the holographic principle in The World as a Hologram, argued that black holes keep their information, and proposed ER = EPR with Maldacena.

   • Robert Hofstadtersame place1979

     Both were physics professors at Stanford: Hofstadter taught there from 1950 to 1985, and Susskind joined in 1979.

     Source: Nobel Prize biography of Hofstadter · Wikipedia: Robert Hofstadter · Wikipedia: Leonard Susskind Outside source

   • Stephen Hawkingidea lineage1993

     Connects through the black hole information problem: Hawking argued that an evaporating black hole destroys information, and Susskind’s black hole complementarity starts from the postulate that quantum theory stays valid.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/9306069, The Stretched Horizon and Black Hole Complementarity · Hawking, Breakdown of predictability in gravitational collapse (1976) Outside source

   • Edward Wittenidea lineage1998

     Connects through the word in the title: Witten’s Anti De Sitter Space and Holography cites Susskind’s The World as a Hologram and gives AdS/CFT a precise holographic dictionary.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/9802150, Anti De Sitter Space And Holography · arXiv:hep-th/9409089, The World as a Hologram Outside source

   • Juan Maldacenacoauthor2013

     Coauthors of Cool horizons for entangled black holes, the paper that proposed ER = EPR.

     Source: arXiv:1306.0533 Also on this site: /founder-files/maldacena

   • Adam Browncoauthor2015

     Coauthors of Complexity Equals Action, with Daniel Roberts, Brian Swingle and Ying Zhao.

     Source: arXiv:1509.07876 Outside source

   • Daniel Robertscoauthor2015

     Coauthors of Complexity Equals Action, which conjectures that the quantum complexity of a holographic state is dual to the action of a region of spacetime.

     Source: arXiv:1509.07876 Outside source

   Juan Maldacena, his ER = EPR coauthorWatch: Leonard Susskind on Richard Feynman, the Holographic Principle, and Unanswered Questions in Physics (video) ↗

7. Juan Maldacena

   1997 · The AdS/CFT paper · middle depth

   Proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence in 1997; at the Institute for Advanced Study since 2001.

   • Edward Wittenidea lineage1998

     Connects through the dictionary: Witten’s Anti de Sitter Space and Holography took Maldacena’s conjecture and stated precisely how boundary correlation functions are computed from the bulk.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/9802150 Outside source

   • Stephen Hawkingidea lineage2005

     Connects through Hawking’s 2005 paper Information Loss in Black Holes, which argues information is preserved and finds the question well posed only in asymptotically AdS spacetimes, the setting of Maldacena’s correspondence.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/0507171, Information Loss in Black Holes Outside source

   • Jared Kaplanidea lineage2009

     Connects through Kaplan’s thesis topic: Aspects of Holography works inside the AdS/CFT correspondence Maldacena proposed in 1997. No joint paper is claimed.

     Source: INSPIRE-HEP thesis record Also on this site: /founder-files/maldacena

   • Edward Wittensame place2012

     Faculty colleagues in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study; the Institute announced their Fundamental Physics Prizes together in 2012.

     Source: IAS press release, 2012 Outside source

   • Nima Arkani-Hamedsame place2012

     Faculty colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study; both were among its four 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize winners.

     Source: IAS press release, 2012 Outside source

   • Albert Einsteinidea lineage2013

     Connects through ER = EPR: Maldacena and Susskind proposed that Einstein’s two 1935 ideas, the Einstein–Rosen bridge and the EPR pair, describe the same thing.

     Source: arXiv:1306.0533, Cool horizons for entangled black holes Also on this site: /founder-files/maldacena

   • Leonard Susskindcoauthor2013

     Coauthors of Cool horizons for entangled black holes, the paper that proposed ER = EPR.

     Source: arXiv:1306.0533 Also on this site: /founder-files/maldacena

   • Nima Arkani-Hamedcoauthor2015

     Coauthors of Cosmological Collider Physics, on reading heavy particles off the pattern of primordial fluctuations.

     Source: arXiv:1503.08043 Outside source

   • Sam McCandlishidea lineage2017

     Connects through McCandlish’s Stanford thesis, Depth Perception in Holography, which studies how boundary data reconstructs the bulk in AdS/CFT.

     Source: INSPIRE-HEP thesis record · arXiv:1604.03110, A Stereoscopic Look into the Bulk Also on this site: /founder-files/sam-mccandlish

   • Sabrina Pasterskiidea lineage2021

     Connects through the holographic principle: Pasterski’s Snowmass review cites Maldacena’s 1997 paper as a concrete realization and sets out to find the counterpart for asymptotically flat space.

     Source: arXiv:2111.11392, Celestial Holography Outside source

   Read the FounderFile →The Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaThe Network Is Not the Space (kinematic space)Watch: Public Lecture: The Meaning of Spacetime (video) ↗

8. Edward Witten

   1998 · Anti de Sitter Space and Holography · middle depth

   String theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study; wrote the precise dictionary for AdS/CFT in 1998.

   • Juan Maldacenaidea lineage1998

     Connects through the dictionary: Witten’s Anti de Sitter Space and Holography took Maldacena’s conjecture and stated precisely how boundary correlation functions are computed from the bulk.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/9802150 Outside source

   • Leonard Susskindidea lineage1998

     Connects through the word in the title: Witten’s Anti De Sitter Space and Holography cites Susskind’s The World as a Hologram and gives AdS/CFT a precise holographic dictionary.

     Source: arXiv:hep-th/9802150, Anti De Sitter Space And Holography · arXiv:hep-th/9409089, The World as a Hologram Outside source

   • Nima Arkani-Hamedidea lineage2009

     Connects through twistor space: Arkani-Hamed’s 2009 paper The S-Matrix in Twistor Space (with Cachazo, Cheung and Kaplan) says its construction was inspired by Witten’s 2003 twistor string theory.

     Source: arXiv:0903.2110 · arXiv:hep-th/0312171, Witten’s twistor string paper Outside source

   • Juan Maldacenasame place2012

     Faculty colleagues in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study; the Institute announced their Fundamental Physics Prizes together in 2012.

     Source: IAS press release, 2012 Outside source

   • Nima Arkani-Hamedsame place2012

     Faculty colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study, where Arkani-Hamed’s appointment began in 2008; both were among its four 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize winners.

     Source: IAS press release, 2012 · IAS School of Natural Sciences faculty Outside source

   • Daniel Robertsendorsed the book2022

     Connects through an endorsement: Witten’s note for The Principles of Deep Learning Theory says it is very interesting, for a physicist, to see deep learning approached from statistical physics.

     Source: deeplearningtheory.com, endorsements Outside source

   • Jared Kaplancrossed into AI2026

     Kaplan told Quanta that AI could soon write theory papers as good as Witten’s or Arkani-Hamed’s, naming both as the bar.

     Source: Quanta Magazine, January 26, 2026 Also on this site: /founder-files/pasterski

   Jared Kaplan, who names Witten as the bar for AIThe Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaWatch: Introduction to Information Theory (video) ↗

9. Nima Arkani-Hamed

   2013 · The Amplituhedron · middle depth

   Scattering amplitudes and the amplituhedron; at the Institute for Advanced Study; Jared Kaplan’s PhD advisor.

   • Jared Kaplancoauthor2008

     Coauthors, with Freddy Cachazo, of What is the Simplest Quantum Field Theory?, written while Kaplan was his student.

     Source: arXiv:0808.1446 Outside source

   • Jared Kaplanadvisor2009

     Arkani-Hamed advised Kaplan’s Harvard PhD; the thesis, Aspects of Holography, was defended in 2009.

     Source: INSPIRE-HEP thesis record (advisor named in the Kaplan FounderFile) Also on this site: /founder-files/kaplan

   • Edward Wittenidea lineage2009

     Connects through twistor space: Arkani-Hamed’s 2009 paper The S-Matrix in Twistor Space (with Cachazo, Cheung and Kaplan) says its construction was inspired by Witten’s 2003 twistor string theory.

     Source: arXiv:0903.2110 · arXiv:hep-th/0312171, Witten’s twistor string paper Outside source

   • Edward Wittensame place2012

     Faculty colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study, where Arkani-Hamed’s appointment began in 2008; both were among its four 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize winners.

     Source: IAS press release, 2012 · IAS School of Natural Sciences faculty Outside source

   • Juan Maldacenasame place2012

     Faculty colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study; both were among its four 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize winners.

     Source: IAS press release, 2012 Outside source

   • Richard Feynmanidea lineage2013

     Connects by contrast: The Amplituhedron starts from the observation that scattering amplitudes have a simplicity that Feynman diagrams hide, and looks for a formulation without them.

     Source: arXiv:1312.2007 Outside source

   • Juan Maldacenacoauthor2015

     Coauthors of Cosmological Collider Physics, on reading heavy particles off the pattern of primordial fluctuations.

     Source: arXiv:1503.08043 Outside source

   • Sabrina Pasterskiidea lineage2020

     Connects through celestial amplitudes: Arkani-Hamed coauthored Celestial Amplitudes from UV to IR with Pate, Raclariu and Strominger, and Pasterski’s 2021 review cites it. No joint paper is claimed.

     Source: arXiv:2012.04208 · arXiv:2111.11392, Celestial Holography Outside source

   Jared Kaplan, his studentThe Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaWatch: Unwinding the Amplituhedron (video) ↗

10. Adam Brown

    2015 · Complexity Equals Action · near the boundary

    Theoretical physicist (black holes and quantum complexity) who leads the Blueshift team at Google DeepMind.

    Leads Blueshift at Google DeepMind; joined Google in 2018. Source, checked 2026-11-12.

    • Daniel Robertscoauthor2015

      Coauthors, with Susskind, Swingle and Zhao, of Complexity Equals Action, published in Physical Review Letters as Holographic Complexity Equals Bulk Action?

      Source: arXiv:1509.07876 · Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 191301 Outside source

    • Leonard Susskindcoauthor2015

      Coauthors of Complexity Equals Action, with Daniel Roberts, Brian Swingle and Ying Zhao.

      Source: arXiv:1509.07876 Outside source

    • Ethan Dyersame place2018

      Dyer joined Google’s Blueshift team in 2018, the group Adam Brown leads, and the two co-organized meetings on theoretical physics for machine learning.

      Source: Dyer FounderFile Also on this site: /founder-files/dyer

    • Daniel Robertscrossed into AI2026

      Both coauthors now work at AI labs: Adam Brown leads Blueshift at Google DeepMind and Roberts leads Frontiers at OpenAI, by their own current bios.

      Source: Aspen Center for Physics, Adam Brown · danintheory.com, Dan Roberts · checked 2026-11-12 Outside source

    The Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaEthan Dyer, who joined Blueshift in 2018Watch: Training Sand to Think: Artificial General Intelligence and the Future of Physics (video) ↗

11. Sabrina Pasterski

    2017 · The conformal basis for celestial amplitudes · middle depth

    Celestial holography: a holographic description for flat space. Research faculty at the Perimeter Institute.

    • Stephen Hawkingidea lineage2016

      Connects through a citation: Soft Hair on Black Holes, by Hawking, Perry and Strominger, cites Pasterski’s papers on gravitational and electromagnetic memory.

      Source: arXiv:1601.00921, Soft Hair on Black Holes (reference list) · arXiv:1502.06120, New Gravitational Memories · arXiv:1505.00716, Asymptotic Symmetries and Electromagnetic Memory Also on this site: /founder-files/pasterski

    • Nima Arkani-Hamedidea lineage2020

      Connects through celestial amplitudes: Arkani-Hamed coauthored Celestial Amplitudes from UV to IR with Pate, Raclariu and Strominger, and Pasterski’s 2021 review cites it. No joint paper is claimed.

      Source: arXiv:2012.04208 · arXiv:2111.11392, Celestial Holography Outside source

    • Juan Maldacenaidea lineage2021

      Connects through the holographic principle: Pasterski’s Snowmass review cites Maldacena’s 1997 paper as a concrete realization and sets out to find the counterpart for asymptotically flat space.

      Source: arXiv:2111.11392, Celestial Holography Outside source

    • Jared Kaplancrossed into AI2025

      Kaplan, by then at Anthropic, gave a virtual talk at Perimeter’s Theory + AI Symposium in April 2025; Pasterski was one of its three scientific organizers.

      Source: Perimeter Institute event page Also on this site: /founder-files/pasterski

    Read the FounderFile →The Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaWatch: Asymptotic Symmetries and Detectors, Part 1 (video) ↗

12. Dario Amodei

    2020 · Language Models are Few-Shot Learners (GPT-3) · near the boundary

    Physics PhD (Princeton, 2011) who directed the GPT-2 and GPT-3 work at OpenAI, then co-founded Anthropic with Kaplan and McCandlish.

    • Sam McCandlishcoauthor2018

      Coauthors, with Kaplan and the OpenAI Dota team, of An Empirical Model of Large-Batch Training, on the gradient noise scale.

      Source: arXiv:1812.06162 Outside source

    • Jared Kaplancoauthor2020

      Coauthors of Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models: Kaplan and McCandlish led the research and Amodei, the last author, provided guidance.

      Source: arXiv:2001.08361, contributions statement Outside source

    • Jared Kaplancrossed into AI2021

      Two physics PhDs, both among the co-founders of Anthropic in 2021.

      Source: Amodei FounderFile, timeline Also on this site: /founder-files/dario

    Read the FounderFile →The Ghost in the Machine: an oral history of GPT-3Architectural DeterminismWatch: Dario Amodei / Founder File (playlist) ↗

13. Jared Kaplan

    2020 · Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models · near the boundary

    Holography PhD (Harvard, 2009) who measured neural scaling laws and co-founded Anthropic.

    • Nima Arkani-Hamedcoauthor2008

      Coauthors, with Freddy Cachazo, of What is the Simplest Quantum Field Theory?, written while Kaplan was his student.

      Source: arXiv:0808.1446 Outside source

    • Nima Arkani-Hamedadvisor2009

      Arkani-Hamed advised Kaplan’s Harvard PhD; the thesis, Aspects of Holography, was defended in 2009.

      Source: INSPIRE-HEP thesis record (advisor named in the Kaplan FounderFile) Also on this site: /founder-files/kaplan

    • Juan Maldacenaidea lineage2009

      Connects through Kaplan’s thesis topic: Aspects of Holography works inside the AdS/CFT correspondence Maldacena proposed in 1997. No joint paper is claimed.

      Source: INSPIRE-HEP thesis record Also on this site: /founder-files/maldacena

    • Sam McCandlishcoauthor2020

      First and second authors of Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models, written at OpenAI.

      Source: arXiv:2001.08361 Also on this site: /founder-files/sam-mccandlish

    • Enrico Fermiidea lineage2020

      Connects through a method: Kaplan’s 2020 lecture compares training compute with the human brain by Fermi estimate, the order-of-magnitude reasoning that carries Fermi’s name. The two never overlapped.

      Source: Kaplan FounderFile, § 03 The Biological Benchmark Also on this site: /founder-files/kaplan

    • Dario Amodeicoauthor2020

      Coauthors of Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models: Kaplan and McCandlish led the research and Amodei, the last author, provided guidance.

      Source: arXiv:2001.08361, contributions statement Outside source

    • Sam McCandlishcrossed into AI2021

      Two holography PhDs who left physics for AI and were among the co-founders of Anthropic in 2021.

      Source: Kaplan FounderFile, timeline Also on this site: /founder-files/kaplan

    • Ethan Dyercoauthor2021

      Coauthors of Explaining Neural Scaling Laws, with Bahri, Lee and Sharma.

      Source: arXiv:2102.06701 Also on this site: /founder-files/dyer

    • Daniel Robertscited in the book2021

      Connects through a citation: the epilogue of Roberts and Yaida’s The Principles of Deep Learning Theory points to Kaplan’s 2020 scaling-laws paper as the empirical study of scaling in language models, and suggests the book’s representation group flow may explain those laws.

      Source: arXiv:2106.10165, Epilogue ε, reference [72] Outside source

    • Dario Amodeicrossed into AI2021

      Two physics PhDs, both among the co-founders of Anthropic in 2021.

      Source: Amodei FounderFile, timeline Also on this site: /founder-files/dario

    • Sabrina Pasterskicrossed into AI2025

      Kaplan, by then at Anthropic, gave a virtual talk at Perimeter’s Theory + AI Symposium in April 2025; Pasterski was one of its three scientific organizers.

      Source: Perimeter Institute event page Also on this site: /founder-files/pasterski

    • Edward Wittencrossed into AI2026

      Kaplan told Quanta that AI could soon write theory papers as good as Witten’s or Arkani-Hamed’s, naming both as the bar.

      Source: Quanta Magazine, January 26, 2026 Also on this site: /founder-files/pasterski

    Read the FounderFile →The Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaarXiv ExplainersWatch: Jared Kaplan (playlist) ↗

14. Sam McCandlish

    2020 · Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models · near the boundary

    Holography PhD (Stanford, 2017), scaling-laws coauthor and Anthropic co-founder.

    • Juan Maldacenaidea lineage2017

      Connects through McCandlish’s Stanford thesis, Depth Perception in Holography, which studies how boundary data reconstructs the bulk in AdS/CFT.

      Source: INSPIRE-HEP thesis record · arXiv:1604.03110, A Stereoscopic Look into the Bulk Also on this site: /founder-files/sam-mccandlish

    • Dario Amodeicoauthor2018

      Coauthors, with Kaplan and the OpenAI Dota team, of An Empirical Model of Large-Batch Training, on the gradient noise scale.

      Source: arXiv:1812.06162 Outside source

    • Jared Kaplancoauthor2020

      First and second authors of Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models, written at OpenAI.

      Source: arXiv:2001.08361 Also on this site: /founder-files/sam-mccandlish

    • Jared Kaplancrossed into AI2021

      Two holography PhDs who left physics for AI and were among the co-founders of Anthropic in 2021.

      Source: Kaplan FounderFile, timeline Also on this site: /founder-files/kaplan

    Read the FounderFile →The Network Is Not the Space (kinematic space)The Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaWatch: Building Anthropic: a conversation with our co-founders (video) ↗

15. Daniel Roberts

    2021 · The Principles of Deep Learning Theory · near the boundary

    Quantum chaos and holographic complexity, then The Principles of Deep Learning Theory; now at OpenAI.

    Leads Frontiers at OpenAI; visiting scientist at MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics. Source, checked 2026-11-12.

    • Adam Browncoauthor2015

      Coauthors, with Susskind, Swingle and Zhao, of Complexity Equals Action, published in Physical Review Letters as Holographic Complexity Equals Bulk Action?

      Source: arXiv:1509.07876 · Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 191301 Outside source

    • Leonard Susskindcoauthor2015

      Coauthors of Complexity Equals Action, which conjectures that the quantum complexity of a holographic state is dual to the action of a region of spacetime.

      Source: arXiv:1509.07876 Outside source

    • Ethan Dyercoauthor2018

      Coauthors of Gradient Descent Happens in a Tiny Subspace, with Guy Gur-Ari.

      Source: arXiv:1812.04754 Also on this site: /founder-files/dyer

    • Jared Kaplancited in the book2021

      Connects through a citation: the epilogue of Roberts and Yaida’s The Principles of Deep Learning Theory points to Kaplan’s 2020 scaling-laws paper as the empirical study of scaling in language models, and suggests the book’s representation group flow may explain those laws.

      Source: arXiv:2106.10165, Epilogue ε, reference [72] Outside source

    • Richard Feynmanidea lineage2021

      Connects through method: The Principles of Deep Learning Theory treats neural networks with the perturbative field-theory toolkit, and its first and last chapters open with epigraphs about Feynman. The book itself draws no Feynman diagrams.

      Source: arXiv:2106.10165 Outside source

    • Edward Wittenendorsed the book2022

      Connects through an endorsement: Witten’s note for The Principles of Deep Learning Theory says it is very interesting, for a physicist, to see deep learning approached from statistical physics.

      Source: deeplearningtheory.com, endorsements Outside source

    • Adam Browncrossed into AI2026

      Both coauthors now work at AI labs: Adam Brown leads Blueshift at Google DeepMind and Roberts leads Frontiers at OpenAI, by their own current bios.

      Source: Aspen Center for Physics, Adam Brown · danintheory.com, Dan Roberts · checked 2026-11-12 Outside source

    Ethan Dyer, his coauthorThe Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaWatch: The Principles of Deep Learning Theory (video) ↗

16. Leo Szilard bridge figure

    1939 · The Einstein–Szilard letter · deep in the bulk

    A bridge figure, not one of the fifteen: conceived the neutron chain reaction in 1933 and worked with Einstein on the 1939 letter to Roosevelt.

    • Albert Einsteincoauthor1939

      Einstein wrote the August 2, 1939 letter to President Roosevelt with Szilard’s help, and signed it.

      Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Manhattan Project history Also on this site: /founder-files/szilard

    • Enrico Fermicoauthor1939

      Coauthors, with Herbert Anderson, of Neutron Production and Absorption in Uranium, written at Columbia in 1939.

      Source: Phys. Rev. 56, 284 (1939) Outside source

    Read the FounderFile →Watch: Leo Szilard: The Man Who Made the Atomic Bomb Possible, Then Fought to Stop It (video) ↗

17. Ethan Dyer bridge figure

    2019 · Asymptotics of Wide Networks from Feynman Diagrams · near the boundary

    A bridge figure, not one of the fifteen: holographer who joined Google’s Blueshift team and wrote scaling-law theory with Kaplan.

    • Daniel Robertscoauthor2018

      Coauthors of Gradient Descent Happens in a Tiny Subspace, with Guy Gur-Ari.

      Source: arXiv:1812.04754 Also on this site: /founder-files/dyer

    • Adam Brownsame place2018

      Dyer joined Google’s Blueshift team in 2018, the group Adam Brown leads, and the two co-organized meetings on theoretical physics for machine learning.

      Source: Dyer FounderFile Also on this site: /founder-files/dyer

    • Jared Kaplancoauthor2021

      Coauthors of Explaining Neural Scaling Laws, with Bahri, Lee and Sharma.

      Source: arXiv:2102.06701 Also on this site: /founder-files/dyer

    Read the FounderFile →The Data Desert: Physics, AI, and the DiasporaWatch: Lessons from scale for large language models and quantitative reasoning (video) ↗