Ingenious: Robbert Dijkgraaf - Issue 35: Boundaries

This past week was the inauguration of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative. Stephen Hawking gave a lecture, media was gathered, and millions of dollars committed. A mural was also unveiled, full of fantastical dust swirls, particle jets, and an interstellar bottle carrying Einstein's equations. The painter, Robbert Dijkgraaf, happened to know the equations already, from his day job: string theorist at, and director of, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel hung their hats at the storied institution, back in the day. Einstein's grand piano even sits in Dijkgraaf's living room--"just to be able to touch it is magic," he says. Keenly aware of the historical weight of the Institute and his position in it, Dijkgraaf serves both as a physicist and as a public figure. Painting isn't his only extracurricular: A former president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a regular fixture on Dutch television, and is deeply interested in science education, policy, and outreach. He sat down with Nautilus on the campus of the Institute this April. The video interview plays at the top of the screen. The honeycombs in which they store their amber nectar are marvels of precision engineering, an array of prism-shaped cells with a perfectly hexagonal cross-section. The wax walls are made with a very precise thickness, the...READ MORE If nature had a human personality, what would it be? I think it's part of being a scientist to understand the character of nature. For instance, even if you're a theoretical physicist, you would describe certain mathematical equations to describe natural phenomena. Or, how does nature let herself be captured? And then you just notice that the specific kind of mathematics or the specific kind of reasoning is very effective.