Think Like A Nobel Prize Winner

Latest Episodes:

Duncan Haldane: The Alchemist Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

Duncan Haldane is the Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics at Princeton University. In 2016, he, along with David J. Thouless and J. Michael Kosterlitz, received the Nobel Prize in Physics “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” There are many remarkable things about Duncan Haldane, not least his devilishly delightful sense of humor and his ability to playfully take on the most complicated matters. I also admire his intellectual curiosity, humility, and persistence. He is deeply driven by a desire to understand the possibilities of strange—even borderline bizarre—new forms of matter. Despite it taking many decades for his prize-winning work to be confirmed, he never gave up on it. At the same time, though, he never assumed he was right or allowed himself to be swayed by the notion that his brilliance would lead to a revolution in physics—as it has. The very day he learned he’d won the Nobel Prize, he reminded us of what really matters: he went right back to teaching and researching.

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About Professor Brian Keating:

Adam Riess: The Star Gazer Sep 27, 2021

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Adam Riess is a distinguished professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University and an astronomer at the Space Tele- scope Science Institute. In 2011, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Brian Schmidt and Saul Perlmutter “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae.” The work— done by a team—was recognized almost immediately (in Nobel years, at least), making Adam one of the youngest winners ever of the physics prize at age 41.

Though we are contemporaries, I consider Adam Riess a role model. His relentless pursuit of topics of great meaning is inspirational. In 2005, he and I competed in a worldwide competition to determine who is a worthy successor to the great physicist Charles Townsend, winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics. I won first prize for my concept for the BICEP experiment—spoiler alert: I did not succeed in replicating Charlie Townsend’s renown—and third place went to Adam Riess. On the day he won the Nobel Prize, my brother Kevin said, “Brian, you won the battle, but he won the war”—something only a big brother would say.

Available on Amazon: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner

About Professor Brian Keating:

Sheldon Glashow: The Nucleator Sep 27, 2021

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In 1979, Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Wein- berg were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and elec- tromagnetic interaction between elementary particles....” Born in Manhattan in 1932 to Russian immigrant parents, he is now a professor emeritus of physics at Harvard University and professor emeritus of mathematics and physics at Boston University. Like a nexus, he’s seemingly connected in one way or another to almost all of the amaz- ing physicists of the twentieth century, and as such has both created nucleation sites for ideas to flourish and also catalyzed other interactions whose effects are still being felt today.

He is the classic figure of an American physicist and is allegedly the inspiration for the television character Shel- don Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. To be sure, Glashow is a bookish intellectual with a mischievous sense of humor. I admire that he is intellectually honest and rigorous but also playful and avuncular. He’s cherished not least for his ability to describe the mysterious aspects of nature in a playful, delightful way. And all of his writings about science—including the wonderful book Interactions, published in 1988, which provided a pathway for the future of physics as he perceived it at the time—make room for the role of serendipity and luck in those discoveries that could never have been forecasted, no matter how many prizes a scientist might have won. He still has a sense of wonder in his late eighties.

Available on Amazon: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner

About Professor Brian Keating:

Carl Wieman: The Teacher's Teacher Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

Carl Wieman is a professor of physics at Stanford Uni- versity, professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and a DRC professor in the Stanford Univer- sity School of Engineering. In 2001, he—along with Eric Allin Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle, and their teams—was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for the achievement of Bose–Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates.” He was also a recipient of the 2020 Yidan Prize for education research.

His indefatigable work to revolutionize the way professors teach—and students learn—was the subject of our conver- sation. The first question I asked was, “If somebody says,

‘I have good news for you and bad news for you,’ which do you want to hear first?”

Without skipping a beat, he said he’d want the bad news because “it turns out negative feedback contributes much more to learning than positive feedback does.” Wieman himself is dedicated to continued learning. This is only one of the qualities I find so inspiring in him. We are all educators and leaders, just in different ways, jobs, and positions. And it is impossible to be a good educator and leader without also being a good student. As Carl argues, one of the things we have to learn is how to teach. The field of teaching needs better best practices. We need to work smarter, not harder.

I admire the way Carl is now applying the same mental tenacity and clarity of purpose he used in the laboratory to his work in education. He realized that teaching is not dissimilar to the processes by which he conducted research—namely, that both are problem-solving exercises and involve certain hypotheses that need to be reexamined. As Carl points out, it’s important to question assumptions and look at things in new ways. He argues that teachers have to be students and have to continue learning—and that they are not currently doing a good job of it. This is disruptive. The bad news: Carl equates current teaching styles to bloodletting. The good news: he doesn’t think that teaching well will ultimately take much more time than we’re currently spending.

Available on Amazon: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner

About Professor Brian Keating:

Frank Wilczek: A Beautiful Mind Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

Frank Wilczek is a physics professor at MIT, Arizona State University, and Stockholm University. He won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with David Gross and H. David Politzer, “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.” The work, which revolutionized quantum physics, was conducted thirty-one years prior, when Wilczek was a graduate student at Princeton. He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has writ- ten multiple books, including A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design and Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

We tend to respect things in other people that we either can’t see in ourselves or see in ourselves but don’t live up to. This is probably why I so admire Frank Wilczek’s endurance and forbearance. Those qualities are incredibly rare in a scientist and are ones I struggle with personally. He had this almost stoic patience, to wait thirty-one years for recognition, knowing all the while that he would likely win the Nobel Prize, but not receiving it. He exhibited incredible grit and resiliency. And he never lost his cheerfulness! Throughout those years, he committed to the process, dedicated himself to his craft, and kept showing up, understanding that the award is not the final arbiter of success or even satisfaction. I’ve learned more from him about patience and determination even than I have about the inner workings of protons and quarks.

Available on Amazon: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner

About Professor Brian Keating:

Roger Penrose: The Singular Mind Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

In 2020, Roger Penrose received the Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” work he did along with his team in the 1960s. He is also a mathematician, philosopher, and the author of several books, including 1989’s The Emperor’s New Mind, an exploration of consciousness and quantum mechanics, which not only had a profound influence on me in my youth but is also part of why I chose to write a popular science book myself. (That Roger Penrose blurbed my book was a thrilling capstone.) Today, he is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, among many other distinctions. Not only is Roger Penrose relentlessly curious, but he’s also fascinated by seemingly everything, from biology to black holes to consciousness. To the layperson, these might seem to all be similar esoteric theoretical activities, but to a physicist, they couldn’t be more different. The fact that he can switch from a completely theoretical field, such as studies of the Big Bang, to a completely applicable one, like investigating the brain, is breathtaking to me. And he has had success in all of his fields.

Most people’s work is either deep or broad. Roger’s is both. It’s the result of an incredible work ethic, a thorough imagination, and sheer longevity. He was eighty-nine years old when he won the Nobel Prize in 2020 and is still going strong. He doesn’t give up, even when people consider his ideas on the outskirts of possibility. I deeply admire and try to emulate that kind of maverick self-determination to go where your curiosity takes you and your passions drive you, even if it’s heterodox.

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