Ben Lillie

Why hasn’t Nima Arkani-Hamed, one of the most respected and influential particle theorists alive, written a popular book? That’s a fascinating opening question in this video interview from The Ideas Roadshow, and Nima’s answer is one I hadn’t seen before.

Nima is indeed a top high energy particle theorist. When I was in grad school he was the driving force behind the theory group at Harvard. (He’s now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.) Every paper he published was pored over by young researchers looking for a good idea to pursue. And of course particle physics has been popular recently, with lots of press and books about the Higgs Boson. It’s something people are fascinated by, and it is wonderful to hear it from someone doing the work. So, why hasn’t Nima, one of the people on the cutting edge, written one?

The answer (which starts around 3:15) starts with the straightforward idea that, “… it is not the most important thing. Our real job is to push physics forward and to try to learn something new about the way nature works.”

But he goes on to say something new to me. There are, he says, people who can make huge advances and discover things that will be known and talked about a hundred years from now. There are also people who won’t do that, who will produce more incremental change. He himself, he says, is right in between. He has a shot at discovering something extraordinary, but it is definitely not a sure bet. And when it comes to making it happen, “The only thing that’s in our control is single-minded focus.”

That feels right. I met Nima a few times when I was a post-doc, and he definitely has that focus. I have a very clear memory of one dinner — he had just given a colloquium, and so the department took him to dinner. In three hours the conversation never once wavered from theoretical physics. That was a major a-ha moment for me. How was Nima so good? Well, part of it was that he was completely and totally obsessed.

He goes on to talk about how hard it is to do communication well. If you don’t put a tremendous, possibly obsessive, amount of effort into it, it’s easy to drift into technical language that isn’t understandable. (The second half of the interview quite unfortunately demonstrates this by example.)

To be clear, I obviously think communication is incredibly important and people who do want to do it should be encouraged and rewarded. But I don’t think it should be required. I’m glad Nima has the space to work on the things that he obsesses about — he’s doing fascinating work and really could revolutionize our understanding of the universe. This is why I get uneasy when people say that all scientists *should* be doing outreach. Having someone who is doing it because they’re required to, and are upset that it’s taking time away from their real work doesn’t seem like a strong strategy. In fact, I’d say communication is so important it should be done by people who are obsessed with doing it well.

Nima goes on to say a few more interesting things about science writing. Around 13:00 he’s asked what are the problems with current writing about physics, and answers that there’s too much focus on what’s new, and that can lead to ideas getting fixed in popular culture before they’re ready. His example is Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe which laid out a clear, coherent picture of what string theory is, right as that picture was being shattered by the second string revolution. Oops.

He also goes on to complain about the phrase “science is culture” in a way that I think misses the point. Ah well.