The Universe Speaks in Numbers

Phil Anderson was one of the most creative theoretical physicists of the past century. Among dozens of key contributions, he pioneered our understanding of symmetry breaking and paved the way to our modern understanding of weak and electromagnetic interactions, and the prediction of what became known as the Higgs boson. He did all this without state-of-the-art mathematics and was wary of mathematics-led approaches to our understanding of Nature. In this interview, recorded on 31 July 2014, he talks about his early career and his suspicions of string theory. He also tells me what topics he would advise bright young scientists to study.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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The second part of leading theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed's inspiring interview with Graham about the mysterious harmony between pure mathematics and fundamental physics.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Cosmologist Martin Rees, a pioneer of multiverse concept, is one of the most productive and respected thinkers about the origins and development of the universe. A former president of the Royal Society, he is also famous for his wise and thoughtful commentary on the state of science, and his thinking about the future. In this interview, he ranges widely over many themes, including the question of whether the pursuit of fundamental physics will one day run out of steam, become too expensive and perhaps too difficult to pursue.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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The interplay between fundamental physics and pure mathematics has led to many remarkable mathematical insights over the past fifty years. Karen Uhlenbeck is one of the mathematicians who made pioneering insights into geometry when studying the physicists' gauge theory of particle interactions. In this podcast, she talks candidly about how many mathematicians came only grudgingly to accept in the 1960s and 1970s that they could do first-class work by focusing on topics whose importance had first been emphasised by physicists, in connection with understanding the real world.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Steven Weinberg is perhaps the most accomplished living theoretical physicist. Now based at the University of Texas at Austin, he has made substantial contributions to our understanding of all the fundamental forces of Nature. In this podcast, he reflects on his career in physics, the 'golden years' in which he and others put the finishing touches to the Standard Model of particle physics, and his views about the future of theoretical physics.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Much of understanding of the universe at the finest level is based on modern field theory, rooted in the pioneering contributions of the nineteenth century British natural philosophers Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. In this podcast of most brilliantly creative young field theorists, Zohar Komargodski tells us why this subject is still so rich in potential, and why he is quite happy to work on it without the stimulus of new and surprising experimental data.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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The discoveries the Simon Donaldson made in the early 1980s about four-dimensional spaces 'stunned the mathematical world', his research adviser Michael Atiyah later recalled. Donaldson was using the physicists' theory of particle interactions to study space itself – with truly remarkable results. In this podcast, Donaldson recalls how he became interested in physics, remembers his most famous discoveries and looks forward to an increasingly close relationship between mathematicians and physicists.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers.

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Douglas Stanford and Pedro Vieira are two of the most brilliant young theoretical physicists who are seeking to understand nature at its finest level. In these two interviews, Stanford and Vieira talk about their work and explain why they are content to spend their times developing fundamental theories of nature, with little or no surprising new inputs from new observations and experiments. 

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Fundamental physics and pure mathematics have never been so closely intertwined. Over the past few decades, some of the world’s leading theoretical physicists and mathematicians explored these connections at the Simons Center at Stony Brook University. In this podcast, the director of the Simons Center, the Spanish string theorist Luis Álvarez-Gaumé, talks about how best to exploit the miraculously close mathematics-physics relationship and hopes for the future.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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'Black holes have become one of the liveliest areas of theoretical research. By thinking about these cosmic objects, using quantum theory and relativity, theorists are clarifying our understanding of information, gravity and the other fundamental forces of nature. Stanford University’s Lenny Susskind is one of the leaders in this field. In this lively interview, he describes how he made the transition from plumbing to particle physics, and why theoretical physics is now so exciting.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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One of the hottest topics in modern physics is trying to understand the scattering of fundamental particles with neither shape nor size - one step up from nothingness. Amazingly, attempts to understand these simple processes theoretically require state-of-the-art mathematics. Theorist Ruth Britto, at Trinity College Dublin, is one of the leaders of this branch of physics. In this edition, she describes how she became interested in this subject and why she finds it so fascinating.

This is one of a series of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Graham’s guest in this edition is the membrane pioneer Michael Duff. Soon after the Second String Theory Revolution, which began in 1995, membranes became widely acknowledged to be a crucial part of our understanding of the inner workings of Nature.

This is one of a number of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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‘The most perfect microscopic structures in the known universe’ – that is the exquisite description of sub-nuclear scattering amplitudes given by theorist Lance Dixon, based at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California. Having made his name as a string theorist in the 1980s, Dixon became one of the leading pioneers in the field of scattering-amplitudes, developing a host of ingenious ideas and techniques. In this thoughtful interview, he describes why he switched his research focus, the fascination and importance of the amplitudes, and the prospects for the subject’s future.

This is one of a number of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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The Dutchman Robbert Dijkgraaf is a rarity – not only is he a top-class mathematical physicist, he is also one of the world’s finest science communicators. In this bracing interview with Graham, Dijkgraaf lucidly describes the state of modern fundamental physics and the continually surprising – and extraordinarily productive – symbiosis between this science and modern mathematics. As Graham says: ‘Robbert gives us a real tour de force.’

This is one of a number of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Greg Moore. Physics and mathematics seem to be in ‘pre-established harmony’, a phrase that has long been popular with physicists and mathematicians working at the subjects’ interface. Greg Moore, based at Rutgers University, has discovered many surprising new relationships between quantum field theories and the string framework and concepts in contemporary mathematics. In this interview, he eloquently describes examples of this and explains why he is promoting the notion of ‘physical mathematics’, a discipline that he believes is now well established, with a bright future.

This is one of a number of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Freeman Dyson. Freeman Dyson talks about his being both a theoretical physicist and a mathematician, the troubled relationship between mathematics and physics in his youth, the impressive physicist he knew (no, it’s not Feynman) and string theory. This interview was recorded last summer at the IAS, Princeton, in Freeman’s office – and he’s as lively, counter-orthodox and fearless as ever.

This is one of a number of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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What do philosophers of physics do, and what light might they shed on the work of today’s physicists and astronomers? Michela Massimi, a distinguished philosopher of science at the University of Edinburgh, discusses these and other matters with Graham in this lively interview, recorded in Michela’s office. She has a bracingly optimistic vision for her subject in the coming decades, as Graham heard.

This is one of a number of interviews given by world-class experts to Graham on the themes he explores in his new book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. 

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Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Juan Maldacena. Juan Maldacena has been described as the first great theoretician of the twenty-first century. In a series of brilliantly imaginative insights, he has enriched our understanding of gravity, space-time and black holes. During this relaxed and informative interview with Graham, recorded last summer in Princeton, Maldacena describes how he became interested in modern physics, his astonishing discovery of an equivalence between a string theory and a quantum field theory. He also gives his views about the current state of our understanding of the universe and prospects for the future of theoretical physics.

Read more in Graham Farmelo's book The Universe Speaks in Numbers.

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Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Sir Roger Penrose. Sir Roger Penrose, a hybrid mathematician-cosmologist, is one of the most accomplished scientific thinkers of the past fifty years. In this compelling interview with Graham, Penrose describes some of the key events of his remarkable career.

Read more in Graham Farmelo's book The Universe Speaks in Numbers.

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Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Michael Green. Michael Green is one of the pioneers of the string framework. In collaboration with the Caltech theorist John Schwarz, he made a crucial breakthrough that led in 1984 to the what became known as the First String Revolution.

Read more in Graham Farmelo's book The Universe Speaks in Numbers.

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