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- [00:00]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
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Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week's story by Jim Gates was recorded live at the Moth as part of the World Science Festival in 2008. The theme of the night was Toil and Trouble, Stories of experiments gone wrong. The Moth will be back at the World Science Festival this year on June 4th. Here's Jim.
- [01:35]
Jim Gates
Good evening. I'm a theoretical physicist and I've been pursuing sort of a white whale like Ahab for all of my career. Haven't quite caught up to that whale yet, but I'm going to tell you some stories about the chase. There was a mathematician who once said that mathematics is not like a well marked highway, but is more like a journey into the wilderness where people often get lost. So I'm going to take you on a trip with me to some of those lost regions. But recently I heard a better description of a theoretical physicist. It said that a theoretical physicist is like someone who rides around in a hot air balloon. The balloon is held up by hot air and they get great pleasure looking down on people. 1999 I was in Iceland. I was at a conference in the second largest city in Iceland. You know, it was overwhelming. The population was enormous, 15,000. And I thought to myself, you know, there are apartment buildings in New York that have more population than this. So I'm at this conference and the scenery is beautiful, the sun is shining. There's very little pollution in Iceland, and one Day, my friends say, let's go for a hike. Well, I had brought my hiking boots, so I was prepared to go for a hike. And we went out side of town and we got to this nature conservancy area and there was an entrance. And then I looked up and there was a small mountain named Yitri Sula. My friends had not told me that our plan was to hike to the top of that mountain. So I said, look, guys, I'm not going. I'm going to sit here and soak up all this beautiful landscape. And when you guys get back, you can pick me up and we can go back to the university. So I sat there for a little while and then I started thinking, you know, how are you going to feel tomorrow? Because you told all your friends you were going to make that peak. And one of the things about physicists is we sort of, as Michael said, we're kind of competitive, even with ourselves, which is sort of strange. How do you compete against yourself? And so I decided that I'd set out on making the peak of the mountain. I started up the mountain. It was a beautiful day. It was actually warm and sunny. So I took my shirt off and tied it around my waist. And I had a baseball cap on and I turned it backwards and I had a set of shades on and just enjoying myself. And after a while, I began to encounter people coming down the mountain. And you know how we behave, we humans behave. If you're in the wilderness, everybody you know, right? You don't know that person, but you're going to say, hey. So these two young men are approaching me as I'm going up the mountain. And. And as they approach, I can see their eyes getting bigger and bigger. And of course, you can sort of figure out what they're thinking. It's like, let's see, we're on the side of a mountain in Iceland, and there's this black man with no shirt, baseball cap and shades, and he's by himself. So we get close, and I speak to them briefly, and I know what their questions are, but I say, bonjour. And so I can now see them. It's like they can almost hear the music from the Twilight Zone. And I could see them fumbling around because they don't know French. But as soon as they spoke, I heard that flat American accent and knew that they were Americans. And so they were struggling, trying to figure out how to ask me who I am. And after a moment of A Little Bit More Play, I say, hi, my name is Jim Gates, who Are you? And then, of course, they're stunned once more because I have the same flat American accent that they have. And they said, we're missionaries. And as soon as they said that, I knew who they were. Because if you've done traveling around the world and you meet young American missionaries, they're members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. It's true. And so we part after this, and I continue on. And because they asked the question who I was and what I was doing there, I actually started asking the question myself. Who was I, and how did I get there? Well, When I was 11 years old, my mom died. It was breast cancer. A very sad event in our life. And I had a father who was in the U.S. army. And for a whole year, he raised four children by himself while he was in the U.S. army, an event that I can't imagine now. But in our household, dad was obviously very dedicated to his children. Eventually, he remarried after about a year, and we moved to Orlando, Florida. And there, something really quite remarkable happened. Because, you see, the US army, even in the 50s and 60s, was basically an integrated society. And so up until that point, I had been used to dealing with people from all over the world, of all ethnicities. But when my father remarried, we moved to Orlando, Florida, and we went to schools that were segregated. And I had a big surprise. I had to learn to be black. Now, you might think that's not an actual task, but you see, cultures are actually different. So even though I look like a black person, I had to learn to switch from the Beach Boys to the Temptations. I had to go from Johnny Rivers to perhaps Aretha Franklin. And so there was this funny kind of switch that was going on. And it was really important because as a teenager, we all know one thing. You don't want to be different from the folks around you. So I started to learn how to make this negotiation. I decided I was going to be a scientist. At about 8 years old, dad had brought home some books on space travel. And I read the books, I opened them, and a world exploded in my head because I could see from these books that these tiny points of lights in the sky at night were places that you could go. And somehow in my young mind, I knew that mathematics and science had something to do with going to those places. And that's the first conscious memory I have of wanting to be a scientist. Later on, When I was 14, there was a TV show on called Make Room for Daddy. Anybody remember that show? At least one person, starring Danny Thomas. And Danny Thomas had this nephew who attended a school, and the nephew was a genius and attended this school where he was studying mathematics and science. And there was a little technical school in Boston called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And so I decided at age 14 that's where I'd like to go. Now, you have to understand that segregation is actually a very interesting phenomenon to experience because, well, Albert Einstein actually said something interesting about this, that the people who are the minority come to believe the things that are said about them. And I encountered this one day on a playground because another young African American playmate of mine said, you know, you're pretty good in school. I said, well, thank you. He said, but you can't be as smart as a white guy, so there's a limit to your intelligence. And of course, I wondered what was the meaning of the statement. I literally went away and for days afterwards tried to figure out what Michael was trying to tell me. Because, you see, remember, I had come into this environment from the US army, which had integrated schools back in the 50s and early 60s, and in fact, I had always been one of the top one or two or perhaps three students in the class. So how could it be that what Michael said was true? How could that be? Well, I never did figure it out, but I did finally figure out what he was saying, which I thought was sort of strange. But I continued in this desire to go to mit. And when it came time to go to college, my dad had to make me apply, you see, because by that time, I understood lots of things about the rules of how our society worked in those days. And I thought, there's no way in the world that I would have the opportunity to go to such a place. And so dad, my father literally forced me to fill out the application form. But of course, in my heart of hearts, it was the thing that was closest to my desire. That was my dream still. But it took my dad to remember that. So I filled out the application thinking, ah, nothing's going to come from this. And then one day in the spring, I was coming home. My father was sitting on the front porch, and dad was never home before I got home. So this was obviously a signal that something had happened. And he was sitting in a rocking chair. And in the south, which I'm sure none of you have ever been to, in the south, it's a tradition to sit out on the front porch in rocking chairs. And dad was sitting in our rocker with the biggest smile on his face that I had ever seen. And I knew the instant I saw that smile that I had been admitted to mit, this dream that had been in my heart for at least four years. And so off I was to Boston. So let's fast forward. I get my PhD, I go off to Harvard, I become a postdoc there, a member of the Junior Society, and I meet the world's greatest physicists, some of the world's greatest physicists, they hang out at places like Harvard, Caltech, mit. And you meet these people and as a young person you say, they are so smart, I'm not going to let them know how dumb I am. So you start to interact with these people and every now and then you get a little hint that maybe you're not as dense as you thought you were. In the words of my physics teacher from high school, not bad for an affirmative action admit. And so I started doing work in a piece of physics that nobody knew anything about at mit, something called supersymmetry. All of you have heard of string theory and superstring theory. Well, this is part of the mathematics that lies at its foundation. And in 1977 I wrote the first PhD thesis on this at MIT. And there wasn't a single faculty member who could teach me how to do this. So I was all self taught and it got me to Harvard next. That's how I wound up at Harvard producing that thesis. And then I went on to Caltech where I met John Schwartz, who was one of the fathers of string theory. So let's fast forward again. I've made it through Caltech and in 1999 I'm on this mountain in Iceland thinking about how I got here. Well, this mathematician said that mathematics is not a well marked highway, but more like the wilderness. On my trek up the mountain, I was about to get lost. I came to a fork on the mountain and the trail to the right looked as if it was less well marked than the trail to the left, less well trod than the trail to the left. So I took the left fork and I walked down this trail. And then I noticed the trail starts to die out. And then finally it disappeared entirely. And as I got to the end of the trail where it disappeared, I resolved that I'd better turn around. You know, it's the first law of holes. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, right? So I'm trying to turn around and face the other way. And as I turn, I trip off the mountain and I start rolling down the side of the mountain in a small accompaniment of pebbles and little small rocks. And I'm thinking as I'm Sliding. Oh, my goodness, I'm not going to make it. And I'm sliding. I'm scrambling. I'm pulling against the rocks with all my might so that I can stop myself headed from this precipice, and it's 35ft away, and I'm still sliding. It's 30ft away, and I'm still sliding. And my heart is racing, and I can see that this is going to be it. And I remember I had two thoughts. One of them was, I don't want to die in a stereotypical way. Because, you see, physicists, in fact, are known for dying on hikes. Numbers of us have found the conclusion of our lives by going on a hike. But speaking of stereotypical deaths, there was another one that happened almost back at Caltech, when one day I went walking with a friend in a community south of Caltech. And we were just walking because, you know, when you can't get a problem to work, you got to think about it. You got to clear your mind. We were clearing our minds, and we rounded this corner. And as we rounded the corner, I looked up because I saw a helicopter. And there were two squad cars and policemen. Their guns were drawn. And if you've seen the picture in the program, maybe you're not surprised. My friend who I had taken with me had hair down to here or maybe here. He looked like a standard hippie. So clearly we were suspicious people and we had to be stopped. But of course, we produced our Caltech IDs, and, you know, they said, okay, well, I guess you guys are okay, so why don't you just get back up at the Caltech? So I said, well, can you give us a ride? You know, smart Al kid, right? And one of the cops says, look, Bud, if you get in this car, we're going to take you to the station. But that wasn't my only encounter with the police, because a couple of months later, I was sitting in a car with a friend, and we were on a bowling team together. And so at a certain point, a glaring bright light shone in the back of the car. And this voice came over loudspeaker saying, get out of the car. And it's a set of policemen because they have a report of suspicious people in the neighborhood. And like these people on the mountain, of course, when people look at me, they. They asked the question, who are you? And how did you get here? And so the other thing that happened is I almost got shot that night. I was yelling at the police, and suddenly I said, you could die. And on that sliding down the mountain. I thought, this is the second time in my life when I know that I'm about to die. But I was able to stop clearly. And so I tried to get back up the mountain. I pull my knapsack on, very musical knapsack, and I'm climbing up to the top of this ridge line and I hear a voice from the other side. And the voice of people, they're talking and I yell out, hello, are there trails over there? And the voice comes back, yes, there are trails over here. I yell, there are no trails over here. And a voice comes back saying, make your own trail. Because you see, that's what I've been doing all my life. And the odd thing about it was when I got to the ridgeline looking for these people, there was no one there. It could have equally well have been the voice of God. Thank you.
- [18:03]
Dan Kennedy
Jim Gates is a visiting professor at the MIT center for Theoretical Physics. He is currently exploring computer software codes hidden inside of superstring theory equations. In 2009 he was a appointed to the Maryland State Board of Education and the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Our collaboration with the World Science Festival continues on June 4th with our show Dark Stories of Stars Aligned. This year's festival takes place June 1st through 5th. For more information please visit worldsciencefestival.com hi.
- [18:44]
Jim Gates
This is Jay Allison, producer of the Moth Radio Hour. The Peabody Award winning Moth Radio Hour I might add, presented by the public radio exchange. Prx.org I'm talking to you from Cape Cod where we are just finishing our new season of five shows. So call your public radio station, find out when they're airing it and then plan some long drives around their schedule. We hope you like it.
- [19:08]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
Our podcast host Dan Kennedy is the author of the book Rock An Office Power Ballad. Learn more@rockonthebook.com thanks to all of you.
- [19:17]
Dan Kennedy
For listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange Helping make public Radio more public@prx.org.