Born in Los Angeles and raised in San Diego, California,Lisi graduated the Cate School (south of Santa Barbara, California) in 1986, received two B.S. degrees with highest honors in physics and mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1991, and received a Ph.D in physics from the University of California, San Diego in 1999.

While not holding a university faculty position, he was lecturer at the University of Hawaii, and short-term visitor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

He had been tinkering with "weird" equations for years and getting nowhere, but six months ago he stumbled on a research paper analysing E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points. He noticed that some of the equations describing its structure matched his own. "The moment this happened my brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," says Lisi. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
"The moment this happened my brain exploded with the implications. I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"

What Lisi had realised was that if he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points, it might explain, for example, how the forces make particles decay, as seen in particle accelerators.

Lisi is not the first person to associate particles with the points of symmetric patterns. In the 1950s, Murray Gell-Mann and colleagues correctly predicted the existence of the "omega-minus" particle after mapping known particles onto the points of a symmetrical mathematical structure called SU(3). This exposed a blank slot, where the new particle fitted.

Before tackling the daunting E8, Lisi examined a smaller cousin, a hexagonal pattern called G2, to see if it would explain how the strong nuclear force works. According to the standard model, forces are carried by particles: for example, the strong force is carried by gluons. Every quark has a quantum property called its "colour charge" - red, green or blue - which denotes how the quarks are affected by gluons. Lisi labelled points on G2 with quarks and anti-quarks of each colour, and with various gluons, and found that he could reproduce the way that quarks are known to change colour when they interact with gluons, using nothing more than high-school geometry (see Graphic).

"This is an all-or-nothing kind of theory - it's either going to be exactly right, or spectacularly wrong. I'm the first to admit this is a long shot. But it ain't over till the LHC sings."


"OK, the hype (and my inbox) has gotten totally out of control. This is, after all, about an untested theory that may or may not turn out to be true. But, on the other hand, it's pretty damn amusing. Mostly, all this media attention just makes me want to go hide for fifteen minutes, and I hope to come back to see physicists pondering this E8 theory, despite the hype."


"Surfing acts as a great 'reset button' for whatever I'm worried about in the rest of my life. [...] If I'm struggling with a difficult physics question, focusing on approaches that aren't going anywhere, surfing allows me to get away from the problem."


Quote from Garrett's web site:
"Differential geometry is the study of smooth manifolds, usually in many dimensions -- it's calculus on steroids. There are ways of classifying symmetric manifolds, and this links up with all other branches of mathematics; so differential geometry is sort of a hub where a lot of mathematics comes together. Now, there is one manifold in particular -- the largest simple exceptional Lie group manifold, E8 -- that is the most beautiful. The system of roots in the picture I sent you describes the 248 symmetries of E8. What I'm working on is identifying each of the elementary particle fields of the standard model and gravity as one of these symmetries. It turns out that this match is... perfect, as far as I've been able to tell. This model is very new, and there are still things I don't understand about it, but it looks perfect so far. You have to be very careful with these things though, as they can encounter a fatal difficulty at any turn -- and when theory contradicts experiment, or requires unreasonable revision, you have to toss it and move on. But this theory of fitting all the standard model and gravitational fields into E8 is working very well so far..."

"Essentially, what I've done is associate each E8 symmetry with an elementary particle field of physics, including the entire zoo of standard model particles and gravity. Other physicists have previously matched the standard model particles to gauge groups, including E8 -- these are called Grand Unified Theories -- but I'm including gravity as well, which is something new, and technically this makes it a Theory of Everything."