What is theory?īy university, each of these scientists had narrowed down their future career options, from a childlike love of general science and a natural aptitude for mathematics, to studying for a physics degree. ![]() The goal is to understand the logic behind the facts and discover nature's inner workings,” says Giudice. “Physics is not a descriptive science in which you just observe nature and make a catalogue of the facts. But unlike other sciences it’s about looking at nature to interpret the logic behind it and seeing which physical laws apply. It was at university that many of these theoretical physicists discovered that particle physics, like all other sciences, helps to answer questions of the universe. To preserve his own pleasure in star-gazing, he started looking into particle physics instead. I always planned to do astronomy and astrophysics,” says Michaelangelo Mangano. That took away the fascination.” “I’m from the Apollo generation – I was a kid when the Apollo missions were going to the moon, so that attracted me to the cosmos. ![]() I always planned to do astronomy and astrophysics,” Mangano grins. “But when I got to university working on astrophysics meant going from the naive approach of a young person who looks at the sky into number crunching. “I’m from the Apollo generation – I was a kid when the Apollo missions were going to the moon, so that attracted me to the cosmos. It was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life!”īut for Michelangelo Mangano, who has worked in the CERN theory department for 22 years, his goal was set as a child as he stared into the night skies, seeing the depth of the universe and wondering what he could learn. It opened my eyes to a completely new perspective on the power of logical deduction in physics. “One day he fell ill and this young substitute teacher came into class and showed us how, from the laws of mechanics applied to a system of colliding particles, one can derive the laws of thermodynamics. He was just stating some laws: the subject sounded totally dull,” Giudice explains. “My high-school teacher was good at lecturing in mathematics but he was most boring when he was getting to physics. Similarly, Gian Giudice, the new Head of CERN’s Theory department, fell into physics after a substitute lecturer with a passion for the subject showed him that physics in school is often boring because it is taught without the tools of mathematics – it is the mathematics that makes physics so exciting. “It wasn’t that I disliked medicine, it's just that I thought if I continue to study medicine I will never get to learn more about general relativity and quantum physics and so on,” she shrugs. Now, she is looking to begin her new role as an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva – where she gained her PhD in 2008. This teacher was a trigger, and six weeks into her degree Bonvin switched to physics. “I liked physics, but I found it a bit dry, a bit boring, so I decided to study medicine,” explains Camille Bonvin, a fellow now at the beginning of her career in the CERN theory department.īonvin was at university studying medicine when something she learnt at the end of her school days began playing on her mind: “Right at the end of school we got this fantastic teacher that started to talk about cosmology, general relativity and quantum mechanics, not going into details as we didn’t have the background, but explaining the ideas behind these strange theories I hadn’t heard of before.” For others, while it would take them time to discover theoretical physics, their love of the subject was ignited by childhood pleasures long before anyone could make it seem boring. It took teachers with a true passion for the subject – who saw beyond the mathematics to the fundamental questions it answers about nature – to show these future physicists their true calling. ![]() Instead they imagined themselves as mathematicians, doctors and engineers. For some theoreticians working at CERN, physics wasn’t the career they saw for themselves – their own lessons in the subject were dull and off-putting. That word stands out when talking to the theoretical physicists at CERN about how they got to where they are now.īoring and complicated are words often associated with people’s impression of physics in general. It was these books that drew him into physics as a child, when he found that he couldn't check out "good fiction" from the library until he was 14 years old (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN)īoring. John Ellis, of Kings College London, in his office at CERN surrounded by science books. “Children’s fiction books were boring so I read all the science books,” says John Ellis, a theoretical physicist who worked on the “Higgs-strahlung process” that helped discover the Higgs boson in 2012.
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