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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Edward Witten. Edward Witten is widely regarded as the pre-eminent theoretical physicist of the past four decades. Based at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he has made dozens of path-breaking contributions to both physics and mathematics.Read more in Graham Farmelo's book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Science writer Graham Farmelo in conversation with Simon Schaffer. Simon Schaffer is not only a leading historian of science but also a great teacher. He is without peer in his ability to illuminate how thinking about thinking about the natural world developed into our modern understanding of physics, often in ways unknown to most physicists today.Read more in Graham Farmelo's book The Universe Speaks in Numbers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leading theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed gave Graham an inspiring interview about the mysterious harmony between pure mathematics and fundamental physics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.