>>12547958Michio Kaku made a fundamental and significant advance in physics, he created light-cone string field theory, following Mandelstam's light-cone formulation of string theory, along with Kikkawa. This contribution was central, because it was the first definition of string theory which was Hamiltonian, meaning it could tell you a detailed story of how strings split and join in space time. It also allowed you to produce a detailed description of the Hilbert space of string theory which is not a scattering space.
The thing about physics is that it has become annoyingly politicized, with two branches--- the technical branch which produces all the results, and the popularization branch which gets all the political clout. This division is extremely unfortunate, but it is a byproduct of the fact that nobody in the general public reads the technical literature. So people with immense technical clout, like Georgio Parisi, are incomparably less politically relevant than those with popular books, like Brian Greene.
This is a plea to the general public: please read the technical literature. I mean it. Please read it. It is a precious production of our culture, it is the main thing we will be leaving to future generations. The 20th century physics literature is our Shakespeare, it is our Homer, it is the thing that defines our cultural legacy to the largest extent. It is not acceptable to have this literature be the domain of an elite, it must be universally appreciated.
Under these circumstances, there will be no need for Michio Kaku to go around selling himself to mass media, he would have been appreciated for his technical contributions, without any need for him to become a publicity hound. But since we don't live in such a world, he has become a publicity hound. It is a bit of a shame, but it will never take away his earlier achievements.
