full interview_luis alvarez-gaume_1.mp3
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] Do you try to play it on every day?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:00:01] Yeah, I play every day, yes. I learned to play the piano before I became 14. I was ignorant of music. But I always, you know, when I work, I always listen to music, classical music mostly. But I wanted to play it myself. So I started before becoming 14, because your brain becomes less and less plastic as time goes on. And I'm okay, I'm doing reasonably well.
Speaker 1 [00:00:23] What is it about music when you, you know, I assume you were also interested in the science of it?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:00:28] I think it's the abstract language, the mathematical structure, the fact that all these wonderful things that you listen to have a structure and a notation, so it's not just that you have to memorize the songs like the bars, there's something that you can write in a very cogent mathematical time language. So I think is probably the most abstract art that exists. People talk about abstract art with paintings which are not figurative, but music has incredible aspect for you. Mix sound, no vision, and you can listen to music with your brain, not necessarily with your ears. For people like me who have a tendency towards mathematics or to use mathematics to describe nature and so on, it's kind of a deformed version of our profession. It's remarkable that so much is contained in these simple formulas, which is this notation with notes. So that makes it will be attractive.
Speaker 1 [00:01:26] Is there a certain kind of music that works better for you?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:01:30] Yeah, I like, I mean, I mostly like people like Bach, but then also the romantics, early 20th century, maybe later in the 20th-century people like Shostakovich, but some of the more modern composers I'm not really very keen on, I have not studied them very much. So when I play piano myself, Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Frank, Foray, Debussy. But that's enough. I mean, I have a profession apart from this, so. I have to play music, I like to play one hour a day because I learned music when I was too old, I was in 40, so your brain is not so plastic. Then I went to the conservatory and it is very easy to pass all the exams in musical theory because it's just counting and that's part of my business. But the question about separating the hands, this thing that you do like this, in a more sophisticated way, that's what really kills you. It takes a lot of training and a lot of hard work to really separate the hands. Separate the voices. But still, it's worth it. Because when you spend an hour like this every day, you can somehow ignore all the problems. You just get immersed into this and it's like psychotherapy without drugs and without alcohol.
Speaker 1 [00:02:54] And so, do you find that practicing music helps your scientific practice? Yeah, very much. So, tell me that back.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:03:02] Well, it helps me a lot because it's sometimes...
Speaker 1 [00:03:04] What's that? Practicing music.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:03:05] The practice in music has the advantage that allows you to somehow, I mean, I think that most scientists, like many artists, we are obsessive and neurotic. And sometimes it's good to stay away from your obsessions and your neurosis. You know, it's healthy from the point of view of your, you know, your health, your physical health, but also your mental health. So, music allows you to absorb yourself into a completely different world where you feel comfortable, where you have challenges, where do you get pleasure. Then it's very good to disconnect with your normal obsessions, so that is a relief. Sometimes you're working on a particular problem and you can be thinking about it for days, for weeks, for months, for years, with different periods of obsession. So music is something that allows you to really... Go away, relax, charge your batteries and come back to the problem later on.
Speaker 1 [00:04:02] Essentially, we have one of our stories as a physicist. You might know him as Stefan Alexander.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:04:07] Yes, he's a jazz player. He works in string theory, looped onto gravity.
Speaker 1 [00:04:15] And he's a very good, I don't know, he's good physicist. I mean, you know, he's not a professional jazz musician.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:04:21] No, he's very good. I listened to his play, in fact. And we met in Berlin and in London.
Speaker 1 [00:04:27] So he's one of our profiles, and I think he says it's incredibly important for him to have that side of his brain activated due to the jazz part, but it really helps with his feelings.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:04:41] Well, the interesting thing is that at the beginning, many years ago before I started learning to play music, I used to listen to music almost all day. Now I play in my head. So frequently I don't listen to a record or a CD. I can look at the piece of music, the partition, and somehow it plays on my head, that's interesting because that way I'm like pre-studying some piece that I like. And now I just look at it with all the aspects, all the structure the composer put in it, which frequently by listening to a piece you don't see any of that. So again, that helps. Enriching, you know, it's fun, it is enriching and it allows me to stay away for a while from my other obsessions.
Speaker 1 [00:05:19] Well, tell us about your obsession.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:05:21] Well, there are too many. Some of them cannot be confessed in public. But there are some things, I think, that we have reached now something like the end of a paradigm in theoretical physics. Of course, some people will tell you that somehow the pinnacle of creation or evolution is the particle physicist of the 21st century. Well, I don't think I believe that that was a paradigm. I think there are many things that we have not understand. And maybe the tools we are using in the 20th century that were very successful are somehow showing many limitations. I would not know how to go beyond this. For example, in the 19th century, which created, for example, the notion of symmetry, Galois with a solution of equations, notion of group theory, and so on. In fact, the classification of what is called the classical groups came in the 18th century. Lee, Klein, Keeling, and later Cartan. So in a sense... Mathematicians were preparing the study of symmetry that somehow was embedded from Euclid into really a profound mathematical structure. But for interesting reasons, in the 19th century, physicists were not thinking in terms of symmetry. They were thinking more in terms dynamics. Well, the problem is that at some point, when you include quantum mechanics in the 20th century dynamics becomes so complex that symmetry becomes a fundamental tool. And that somehow dominated. The way we think about physics and fundamental physics and fundamental properties of nature in the 20th century. But now we begin to see that there are many limitations to that picture. And somehow, of course, before you shift a paradigm, you have no idea where you are going to be jumping. So that's what I'm trying to look into. These are the things, obviously, I mean, when you look for the changing paradigm, it may come in a week or it may in a hundred years. And then for more fun, I've been trying to understand one of these clay problems, which is this P versus NP. This thing about it's a very interesting issue. To what extent? It's a question of computational complexity. It has a lot to do with the function of the human brain, the function about how important is creativity. If what is called NP, kind of what you might call the very complex problems, turn out to be equivalent to polynomial. Then somebody means that the human brain is kind of trivial. So all of our mathematics will eventually be invented by a computer. If they turn out to be different, which is what many people believe, then, of course, we have hope to know. Of course, we'll be beaten to a chest and go by computers. But maybe we still have some part of our brain and our creativity that will not be at least in the near future.
Speaker 1 [00:08:01] That's our friend.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:08:08] Anyway, so I have one part which is very mathematical, very formal, quantum field theory, cosmology, and so on. But I have this other aspect which is under another limit of our knowledge, which is computational complexity and the interaction with the human brain and human creativity, which I find absolutely fascinating. The interesting thing is that you can formulate some of these questions in mathematics, which is much simpler than the mathematics we use for cosmology and particle physics, which makes it, first, easy to learn the subject quickly, and second, to even make contributions.
Speaker 1 [00:08:39] So you said maybe the answer will have the answer in a week, maybe it'll be 100 years. So what does that feel like when this is something that you're obsessed with, it's very important to you, and you may not be around to do?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:08:51] Well, I think that one of the characteristics, in my opinion, of real scientists is that you have to accept from the beginning that your lifelong companion is going to be ignorance. And it's the most faithful companion you could imagine. You cannot get rid of it. You can imagine, for example, when people in the 19th century, just to give you an example, were thinking about what powers the sun. Well, people had already discovered thermodynamics. Hot, cold, refrigerators, energy conservation, entropy, and so on. So they tried to apply those ideas to the sun, well, the sun looked like a gas. And then they started applying the ideas of thermodynamics to compressing gasses. And then, they found out that it was impossible. To power the sun that way for more than 10,000, 20,000 years, or maybe even 2 million years. But at the time, they were beginning to understand and to learn that the Earth was far, far older than that. Well, until quantum mechanics and nuclear physics came, there was no way you would get the answer. So it took almost 100 years. Sometimes, for example, the solution to the Euclid paradoxes took 2,000. Years. So Gauss came and all of a sudden he opened a completely new window in mathematics. But to solve some of these problems we had to wait for a thousand, two thousand years. In the case of Fermat's large theorem, which is again a very famous conjecture in mathematics, it took 350 years, you never know. But that's, you know, that's one of the fascinations about science.
Speaker 1 [00:10:27] Can you tell us that again, because I know you did a little, just about your companion being in there. So I'm going to ask you again, is that you're not going to know often, ever, how can you work out for you?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:10:40] Well, I mean, it's something that you accept. I mean obviously, if you're thinking that you're in science for fame and glory and getting accolades and Nobel Prizes and medals and so on, then it's pretty frustrating. In that case, what you should do is work in a problem that is relatively easy to solve, that you can solve within, say, from a week to a few years. But some of these are more challenging problems, as I was just giving you a few examples. I mean it's good if you just put a little bit. At least you persuade yourself you're putting maybe a little grain in the right direction. Sometimes you have more fun working than getting to your destiny, because you learn a lot just by working.
Speaker 1 [00:11:21] And you are presumably learning from people who came before you.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:11:25] Yes, of course. Well, obviously, I mean, it is impossible. The level of complexity nowadays in science, almost in any subject, except maybe in politics. Sorry about that, but, you know, it's very difficult that somebody could really create or recreate all the science that exists. So obviously, you spend a lot of time in training. This is something which is interesting because it shows that somehow the best ever invention of the humankind was writing. Without writing, we would not be where we are. It's impossible that you could transmit orally all the knowledge that we have. So be it in the old writings with papyrus and all these things, or even digital media, it's still writing. It's remarkable. So it is thanks to this accumulated knowledge that we can continue making progress. And the interesting thing is that, at least in science, the basic principles are relatively simple. Then, of course, the applications and so on have an incredible amount of complexity and that's why you need specialties. But that's what is really fascinating about the whole thing. You need to learn and understand some principles. That takes a few years of training, but then you can revolutionize the world. So it's relatively easy, well, quote unquote, to go to the frontier. You don't need to start studying at age 17 when you go to college and finish college at 80. And then you start doing something new. It's amusing and actually it's fascinating the fact that, you know, at least in young minds you can put in somehow condensed knowledge that has been acquired for thousands of years with hundreds of thousands of people, some of them totally unknown. And they are really pushing the frontiers. And in fact at the end, in the end is science which is solving our problems as you know to survive as humanity and to make sure that the planet will not just disappear.
Speaker 1 [00:13:24] The science of creative professionalism.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:13:26] Of very much so. Science is a very creative profession. In fact, there is not much difference between science, scientist and artist because in many respects, well, there's a big difference in my opinion, which is the fact that somehow basic science or fundamental science is unavoidable while science is, sorry, art cannot be repeated. Because in a sense.
Speaker 1 [00:13:47] That's it. Right. We're going to ask you again. It's a science and creative profession.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:13:53] Well, science is a very creative profession, and we can give many examples about it. But in that sense, it's very close to art. The only thing is that there are differences between the two. In a sense, science more solid or more robust, while art is more fragile. The reason is that the basic concepts of science are unavoidable. They could be discovered by a single genius like Einstein when he formulated special relativity or general relativity. Or you may need hundreds of people, like in quantum mechanics, and decades, but eventually we'll get there. That's not the case in art. In art, you know, Beethoven's Sonata has happened in Beethoven's head, but without Beethoven it wouldn't have happened anywhere else. So in a sense there is this fragility of art. But apart from that, which I think is a fundamental difference, the obsession, the neurosis, the anguish, the elation about discoveries and new ideas is the same. So that's why artists and scientists normally get along very well because they have very similar profiles psychologically.
Speaker 1 [00:14:58] Don't talk about that a little bit more.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:15:02] But that's the thing, the good thing about science is that at least we have this illusion that we're going to find some fundamental truth. Artists make the truth themselves, but that's a big struggle because maybe frequently many people do not share that truth. And you have some like Van Gogh who dies, but they never sold a painting, and then nowadays you cannot buy a painting with less than a hundred million dollars. So in a sense it's a much more fragile world, and at least for example when you're scientist, if you are doing... You did good work in your university and your research and your PhD, you can even get a job. You can get paid for something that artists do, but they don't get paid, which is daydreaming. And the other day, science, certainly theoretical science, to a large extent is day dreaming. You have to do teaching out there, but well in art you can do daydream, but you don't get paid to do it. They're very famous. So in a sense, they are always on a tight rope in the art world, where in science we still have some cover because in a Have a beautiful night. I don't think that art is going to solve the climate change problem. Science will, so in a sense, also society reacts to this creativity on the scientific community or the artistic community differently. But if we put that aside, I think that there are incredibly nice parallels between what we do in art and what we'll do in science, and to some extent, they're interchangeable.
Speaker 1 [00:16:23] What about the creative piece? So you said they're both creative. Yeah. So what's it like to be creative in science? I think people have an idea of what it's like to creative in art, but maybe not so much in science. I'm talking about the general public.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:16:36] Well, I mean, creative art, for example, think about when photography appeared in the 19th century. Maybe that was what motivated many artists to free themselves from being able to make a portrait that was very accurate. And you look at, for examples, Bacon and his portraits where he really tries to stretch the flesh of the model to the point that you always slightly recognize it. But it's like a caricature. So, I'm in a sense. The progress of technology, I think, probably pushed many of the artists to really explore uncharted territory. Then you have Akubis and you have Picasso, you have Juan Gris and all these people. Well sometimes, of course, it happens only in the artistic side. For example, I don't know, you think about Schoenberg and trying to free from classical music or classical music theory and classical harmony. Was that motivated by him? Technology, probably not. It was motivated by a different conception and finding the limitations of previous art. In science, we were discussing, one discussed frequently about paradigm shifts, and there you have extremely creative minds who finally look at nature the right way. And it's not clear where that comes from. People who are the same, you can think about those who were with Einstein in ETH in Zurich studying. And they were actually very nice people, very good people. This man, this person's mind was different. Maybe they were in, but also maybe the creativity, the depth of vision, to be able to see things differently. In fact, if you look at Einstein's first paper in special relativity, the one that generated the series of the Anus Mirabilis in 1905, not one equation is new. All the questions in that paper were known to Maxwell, were known to Lawrence, were not to Poincaré, were to many people. But none of them had really understood it deeply. He had understood that it had to do with space and time, the relativity of simultaneity. And you know, it's absolutely extraordinary. That's what opened up this thing. And as I said, all the formulas were known. Maxwell's equations that describe electromagnetism, in fact, they were formulated about 60 years or 50 years before Einstein came with this. In fact, they were crying as the harbingers of relativity, but nobody was listening. Nobody was looking at those equations that explained radiation, that explained electromagnetic radiation, communication, and so on, understood that the equation had such deep message, and it was the mind of someone like Einstein. I mean, that, I think, is an act of creation. And it repeats, of course, it repeats at this grandiose level very rarely in history. But it repeats these little miracles happen every day on smaller problems. That's what everybody likes. Solving a problem, which is just applying some rules, at the end of the day, is boring. You can even teach it to a computer. But trying to find something original, different way of looking at things, is what everybody's looking for.
Speaker 1 [00:19:48] Has that happened to you? Yeah. So what did it feel like? Tell us, tell us, come on.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:19:52] Well, I think it really feels great, because at some point, all this effort gives you a different vision about some particular problem. And I was involved, for example, in the formulation of what is called the Second Revolution of String Theory. I've been able to provide the tools and the concepts that helped the community make a huge move into completely uncharted territory. I mean, it was not just me alone, but still, I was part of those who started doing that move. It's a fantastic feeling because maybe all those theories do not have, you know, nature doesn't care about them. The difference between physics and mathematics is another thing that you should talk to mathematicians eventually because I think it's interesting how this is reality. Some mathematicians, for example, think about there is a platonic world of mathematic truths and what you do is you simply walk around and you are able to grab one or grab the other but they are there. Other people, of course, have a more cynical attitude and say, no, this is just all in the wiring of your brain. But still, the good thing about mathematics is that it's eternal. Pythagoras theorem, still as good today as it was 2,500 years ago. It's not the same thing in physics. In physics, for example, Italian physics is more or less has historical interest, but it has nothing to do with reality to some extent. So in a sense, nature is the ultimate oracle. Mathematics is a different kind of an oracle that somehow is based on truth, although you have Gethers' theorem and all these things. In physics, nature may not be interested in the beauty of your theory. So again, this is the risky part in our business. We were doing all this string theory for a number of decades, and there are interesting, fascinating consequences, mathematics and so on, but unfortunately, nature doesn't seem to yet care about these things, so it may happen that 100 years from now, people You know, these crazy people doing string theory, they were all nuts. Because they were missing this, and this, and this and this. That's why sometimes in physics, or in the experimental, you know, natural sciences, you need to make experiments, because you set it straight. And unfortunately, some of these things about black holes, things here and so on, we lack experiments. So the guidance is provided either by leaders of the community, or by fashions. Maybe I shouldn't say these things, otherwise my colleagues will kill me, but. Ha ha ha!
Speaker 1 [00:22:18] Like anything else, there's trends.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:22:21] Precisely.
Speaker 1 [00:22:21] What about failure?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:22:25] Well failure, I mean, there are different ways you can fail. One of them, which is the obvious one, is that you don't get a job. I mean nobody's interested in your theories, and therefore nobody wants you as a colleague. It's as simple as that that eventually you go work in a bank or do some other activity. The other form of failure is that you may have very high expectations about your research insight. And you happen, you know, you read 60 or 70 or 80, and you find that, well, KGT is some good stuff, but there is no something that will remain like a, it will be a footnote in a dictionary, in an encyclopedia, but no more. Well, you have to accept that's the challenge. And that's part of the, again, it's part of the way, you are doing science because you enjoy the trip. And if on top of the trip you can really visit very nice oasis and very nice landscape, then it's even better. But you have to enjoy it, just the challenge of being part of it.
Speaker 1 [00:23:22] I talk to a lot of artists, and one of the questions we ask is, how do you feel when you've completed a piece? What does it feel like when you're done with something? And almost all of them say, I hate that part, because all the potential is gone, just for an artist. It's like, when I'm still working on it, it could be these things. And then when it's finished and put on the gallery wall, it's not so exciting. I think we feel that way when we make films. Now it's all potential. It's a point that you have to do. Is your work in science, does it have endings like that? Are you ever finished?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:23:58] Well, I mean, in a sense you can never be finished. You could be doing impressionist paintings for hundreds of years, right? I mean it's just a technique or a tool, and eventually there are areas where you reach what you wanted to say, and then it's time to move on. And I think that is very refreshing. So I think I don't look at it as a negative point. I think at some point, okay, you say, well, I've reached up to here, I've spent all this time and all this effort in this particular set of ideas, but I would like to do something different. So for me, it's refreshing. I don't have that negative attitude. So it's nice that you feel that, OK, I've closed this chapter. If not fully, maybe you come back to it after a few years when you look at the inside of somebody else, and then you get re-motivated on that thing. But it's to change. I mean, to be thinking always about the same thing, I don't know, I find it a little depressing somehow. So I prefer to close chapters or partially close chapters and move on to something else because I find it mentally very healthy.
Speaker 1 [00:24:56] That's the question. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that's interesting, getting back to the difference between art and science is that it seems that artists, they're movements in art, there are periods of time where people are all doing the same thing, but then the divergent thinkers come along and there's a reaction to that, it's something else.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:25:24] Yeah, it happens.
Speaker 3 [00:25:25] Okay, okay.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:25:26] No, it certainly happens in science, because sometimes we are stuck on a particular problem. Like I was saying, people thought in the 19th century that we had reached the end of science. All you have to do is to do more computations and more accurate measurements, but that was the end. And then all of a sudden quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear physics, everything came. So clearly. And also now, for example, you could say that we do not understand the quantum structure even if some of my colleagues say that they do. I don't believe them. And then there are different attitudes. There are people who are doing what you were talking before about Stefan Alexander, that's loop quantum gravity, then string theory, then causal triangle, blah, blah. There are many tendencies and people feel comfortable with some concepts, but we're probably still far from understanding that thing, among other things, because we have no experiments. You know, a few years ago, there was this thing about will the LHC create black holes and destroy the Earth? Well, nobody in his right mind would expect that they would destroy the Earth, but it would have been fantastic because they would have finally understood quantum gravity. People were thinking that the black hole goes into center of the Earth and begins eating everything and then nothing is left, but that would not happen. In fact, you can easily prove that because if that had happened, cosmic rays do the LHC experiments. If you look at the Lhc as a 30 or 40-year experiment, every second the universe makes about a hundred billion LHC's. So because they are cosmic rays, if you look at the cosmic rays that are actually hitting on the moon, many of them have much more energy than any of the particles at the LHC, and the moon is still there. Well, the moon has been there for about four billion years, and they've been bombarded by these very, very high particles, so if there was a real probability that they would induce these small black holes and so on, then you would see something very dark going around, but nothing else. But still, that would be... Among the many theories that there are, some of them were predicting the existence of the possibility of creating black holes at the LHC. And that would open the quantum dimension for space and time. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. So we still don't understand that part, but there are these fashions. For example, if you work on some particular fashion, well, less fashionable theory, I won't say which, because I don't want my colleagues to come after me. Then you say that they don't find many jobs. I mean, this is cruel, but this is the aspect of fashion. If you work on some of the areas which are considered more mainstream, not necessarily more right, but more mainstream. Then the job market is much more friendly. So fashion also exists in our field. And sometimes people might be working on areas, I won't mention them again because some of them are still alive, but anyway in the 60s and 30s and 70s there were some fashions. People were getting jobs on that. And now we found that, we've learned in fact that those concepts were interesting. Or those points of view were interesting, but they were not it. So I think that, you know, in that sense, there are so many similitudes between art and science that it includes also the existence of fashions, dogmas, prejudices, popes, et cetera.
Speaker 4 [00:28:51] I just want to go back to music for a second. So you talk about music being the thing that will separate you from your obsession for a bit and relax your mind. Why music? Why not poetry? Why go to a museum?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:29:13] That's a very good question, you know, there are many ways you can relax your mind. Yes, there may be ways you could relax your mind. Reading, for example, is one thing, poetry, going to a museum, talking to your friends. In Mediterranean countries, people, unlike Northern European countries, people need less psychotherapy, because the psychotherapy is made with your friends Thank you. You talk to your friends, and then you don't interiorize everything. So by having a few beers with your friends you get out of psychotherapy, unless of course you're very crazy. In northern countries it's different, people don't have this possibility. But sometimes you also need, still, poetry and reading literature requires some type of effort, it's still too intellectual. So you can easily disconnect yourself from it, because reading is relatively easy. Music requires all your attention, all your unavailability. It's like when you're playing squash. You're playing a squash and you start thinking about, oh, did I leave the oven open? You lose the point. So you need something which gives you this incredible focus. And at least me, I find that music, performing music, not listening to music, trying to play something, trying to understand the mind of the composer. Gives me a huge concentration that I can ignore everything else. That's the day. It's like a tabula rasa. It's a like a preset.
Speaker 4 [00:30:37] Don't you think music does something particular to the brain?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:30:41] Probably, I'm not sure what that it does. I mean, of course, you have all these neurotransmitters that are really excited. You probably generate serotonin. So that's what, at the end of the day, if you wanted to think about this chemically, there are some of these neurotrasmitters that are induced, presumably the psychosomatic effect. And that's why I practice it. Of course, it is hard because when you learn old, nothing is taken for granted. You really have to work every step. But the thing is that the pressure you get when you are able to play something and you enjoy it, and even your teacher enjoys it, which is naturally difficult. It's extremely motivating.
Speaker 1 [00:31:16] When you are playing, I mean, I hear a piece of music, and I mean I had some musical training, but I'm mostly going for the melody and the feeling. Are you sensing structure? Oh, yes. So tell me about it.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:31:30] Well, the one thing good thing about music is that it has both aspects. The aspect which is the more ludic of going to an opera, to a concert, even a rock concert and listening to all these things is this kind of ethereal art. You don't see it, but you listen to it. There's no plastic form of it in a certain sense. And the other aspect that is this abstraction, for example, you look at voices, it takes a while to understand Bach, for example, because Bach doesn't have chords. Bach has voices, it's like polyphony, that's the same thing. Four people talking, and you have to be able to listen to all those four speeches. That's the difficulty of Bach. There are very few notes. You look at the notes in a Bach partition score, and there are very a few notes, you look at one in Liszt, and some of these things, and it's so dark. But it is so difficult to play the different voices, so you make a mistake, and everybody listens to it. With romantic music, you use the pedal, there are these voluminous chords, it's much easier to let you know that it's very well to hide it. So it is the purity of that music which is a challenge. And that's what, I mean, to me, it makes me, I find it very fascinating because it has a lot of structure. That's what we like in mathematics and in physics, some hidden structure. In fact, you look at, you ask someone to listen to Bach with you, even if they like it, and you ask them how many voices do you listen to it now. Frequently people do not listen to them. But once you start telling them how to listen to them, it opens a complete new world. So when they start listening to Bach, they begin to be so pure. You start with the first voice, you see the second voice coming, and then the third. And you know, a good interpreter has to be able to keep all those for a few minutes, and that's extremely difficult. That's why you need so much concentration.
Speaker 1 [00:33:21] He also, you know, he was writing religious music, but he was also putting all sorts of mathematical jokes and patterns.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:33:28] Yeah, and copied himself many times, because he had to write so many things that he copied the same structure for flutes, for the violin, for piano, and so on, because, you know, he did three complete cycles of the cantatas, so that's 150 pieces, really long pieces with all kinds of things. So, I mean, he was a genius, but he wrote what you might call 1,200 papers. It's just unbelievable. And he had 14 children, and he had to feed them, and he have deaths. So he... Remarkable.
Speaker 4 [00:34:01] Are you familiar with the contemporary a cappella group called Ruinful of Teeth?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:34:07] Sorry.
Speaker 1 [00:34:09] It's one of our stories, Mr. Just to go back to the step-by-step
Speaker 3 [00:34:14] So he claims that essentially playing influences the way in which you look at a problem. Is that something that...
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:34:27] It doesn't happen to me, I'm happy, maybe it could happen that, but probably it is because it frees your mind, so sometimes your unconscious is always thinking about your obsessions. You fool yourself by claiming that, I mean I'm not trying to fool myself, but I am aware of the fact that at least consciously I'm thinking about the problem. Sometimes when you let the unconscious solve the problem, by sleeping, by going with friends, go to his place, play music. Okay, boom. To wake up in the morning and say, ah, now. So in the case of Stefan, maybe it's precisely that which is the liberating fact, that the unconscious is, well, he's playing, he's taming his obsessions, and he's letting the unconscious do the clean work.
Speaker 1 [00:35:14] What he says to us, and I'm curious what you think, is that... Part of his cleaning out or just sparking, conversations he has with non-colleagues or non-physicists, he finds stimulating. They ask sometimes questions that as a professional he might find not stupid, not simple, but he talks to his jazz guys and they ask him questions and he answers them. It kind of helps, it helps, internally it helps you, okay. It's something about going outside your, your little kind of circle.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:35:53] Well, you don't have to go to talk to your just or musicians. This is the magic of teaching, exactly the same. You have ignorant people in front of you of different ages, which are in principle ignorant. And to be able to explain something is the most, how can I say, not diminishing, but it really normalizes what you feel about yourself. Sometimes. If you talk to your colleagues, you are respectful. Say, well, that was a stupid thing to say, but I'm going to say it. You can get full, because you have to be polite. You have to have polite company. But when you have someone who is not in your subject, if you're not able to explain what you're doing, it really means that you don't understand it. Because there are a few things, of course, in physics or math that require some preparation to explain it. So not everything is so simple. But frequently. If you are not able to explain to your grandmother, as Fatman used to say, what you are doing, maybe you don't understand it so well. So this is the challenge from these people. In a sense, I think about this in the general context of teaching, which is communicating at the end of the day what you know. So if you are unable to communicate what you do to people who are already prepared, who know structure like musicians and so on, well maybe there is something you are missing in your own understanding. So that's a very nice experience when you don't teach just to your colleagues who are going to be polite and not say, ah, this is crap, but you teach to the students something and say, well, come on, that demonstration is completely crappy, I don't know, it's not anything you're talking about. That's nice. So if sometimes you have enough ideas or your ideas, for example, say you are dry or you have a period of transition, some changing subjects, one of the best things you can do is to give a good lesson. You come out, you feel great. You see that the students, well, after an hour, an hour and a half, you see that students are looking, still interested. It makes your day, or even your week.
Speaker 3 [00:37:58] So we spoke to a wonderful artist named Matt Schlein, who spoke about the eureka moment, that's in reality not being, you know, putting your finger to the sky and saying, I've got it, but really more of a, huh, that's funny, you now, quiet moment. And I'm curious if you could sort of talk about that moment for yourself, maybe both in science and in music, how that feels for you.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:38:23] Well, music, I'm not that good, so I started late in music. But in science, again, it's something that you're looking for. So again, the magic about science or creative activities in general is precisely pursuing something new. But you don't know what that something new is going to be. And then sometimes you say, ah, that was trivial. That was so simple. We're just waiting to do this. And sometimes you really need to require a huge amount of effort. So again, it's the search, as the poet used to say, in Spanish, you make the way by walking. So it's this thing, not necessarily where you go. You'll always find some interesting stuff going on. As I said, sometimes, for example, the eureka moment is for something relatively simple, or sometimes people are luckier people, they find the eureca moment for something revolutionary. But still, it is fun in both cases. And that's what keeps you going, you know, if you were not having fun doing a marathon or walking and so on, then what's the point?
Speaker 1 [00:39:27] You said something, and I'm just going to follow up on it, is that, which I think is related, is that I think you used the word irrational. You talked about the scientific method. The rational. The rational, yeah. Do you remember that, and do you?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:39:39] I'm not sure, but I remember that.
Speaker 1 [00:39:41] Well, you said it's about this obsession, you know, obsession with all the problems of your brain, your brain is looking for something, it just becomes, it takes over.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:39:53] Yeah, well, as I said, you know, it's clearly science, or I think creation is not rational. I mean, I do not know how to rationalize unconscious, for example. You can talk to a psychoanalyst. We do not yet know the rules of how the brain functions at that level. But it's clear there's something fundamental there that is somehow the origin of many of our insights, because there are things that are constantly manipulated. There's a very interesting example from neurophysiology, which is that if you look at the visual cortex, which is here, this part here, visual cortex is 97% of the time talking to itself and to the rest of the brain, not to the eyes. That's a remarkable thing. Because what you think that you see, do you think the visual is just telling you, I'll interpret this, it's all crap. The visual cortex is spending most of its time talking to itself and to its brain. So it's this whole interpretation that is going on. And I think that for ideas, it's exactly the same. That's why the unconscious, or the irrational part of the, quote unquote, irrational part of our brain plays a crucial role in human creativity. We haven't yet, we have not understood it. But you know, when Einstein was talking about that the people who made these major discoveries, of course, there is some rational motivation because you ask yourself a question. But the way that your brain answers that question. Most of the time, a lot of irrationality built into it, because you get something that was totally unexpected. It doesn't follow from a single reasoning. It's out of the air. And we have to really take care of the irrational as well.
Speaker 3 [00:41:31] One more question. Could I just ask you as a professor, how we teach art and science or STEM in schools has been siloed more than it has not been. I'm curious what your perspective is on our culture, how do we teach it, and how may it be obvious?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:41:50] Well, that's a very good question. How to teach science and how to teach art, this is a very, it's a good question, I think that the important thing, well, I mean, some people have a very libertarian attitude, which is that somehow, you know, it's like the children will learn on their own if they are motivated. I think we have to have a little compromise. We have to really always correct errors, no question about it, but we have allow people to think by themselves and try to understand and to understand their own creativity. I mean, I don't like people being spoon-fed. Also, sometimes I give lectures. I was giving lectures in Tel Aviv at the beginning of December, and I had to lecture on the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which is a huge subject that has been done in 130 years in five hours to 100 experimentalists. And then one of the people presenting the lectures said, well, you can ask any question, because there are no stupid questions. And I said, no, no. There are plenty of stupid questions! I mean, you should really think before you ask the question for two reasons. One is that, in fact, some other people listening to the argument may be interrupted. So you have an argument, and all of a sudden you have all this constant interruption, then the others are going to get exhausted, and they will not pay attention. And second, maybe you have not understood, and it's not a bad idea to really think. So I try to think, you know, when I teach, I really try to inspire the students. You know, to learn things, to understand them, and to some of the original. And that's something which should be fostered. But also, I do not like this thing that, you know everybody, like, this is not very fashionable. Everybody has his or her own truth, and whatever they think is unrespectable as what is, you now, anointed in textbooks and so on. That's not true. I think this is important to give the self assurance, but also to give this notion that somehow there is something, things that they do not know and they have to learn. Sometimes students, or not necessarily technical people, are too critical. Whatever you say, oh, come on, this stuff, it cannot be true. And so, well, you know, it's like these people who, it's a difficult subject, this thing about the teaching. There are good teachers, which precisely, what they do is they really inspire. I mean, these are the best teachers I've had, people who really inspire me because to, at some point, you have your own techniques to do your equations, your formulas, so on, so reading a book is easy, and reproducing the formulas. As someone who inspires you and to tell you, you see, this formula, you think that it's trivial, but what's behind is this. And most of the time in scientific text, or even in art, in the text about art, those who write about it, they hide all that. In mass textbooks, you look at some of the best mass textbooks in the Burbaki series, you cannot even imagine what originated those ideas. But that's the worst way to teach, in my opinion, because you have to tell people know what they can read in a textbook. You have to tell them why it was interesting. The process of creation, the process of the Eureka moments, why people came up with it, in small things and in big things. And then people can really begin to understand what it really means. Anyway, that's my world teaching.
Speaker 3 [00:45:07] I think it's a very important follow-up, but I have to change it. Yeah, I've been running a little. My follow-ups to that amazing answer is, do you believe it is possible to teach creativity?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:45:19] I think you can encourage it. I think creativity can be encouraged.
Speaker 1 [00:45:25] Sometimes people...
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:45:28] I believe that creativity can be encouraged. I think everybody can have a different level of creativity. But that means you have to be kind of, you know, be humble but at the same time also proud. You really have to, you now, to be able to appreciate these contradictory aspects of human behavior. I mean, if you are too humble, then you say, well, whatever I think that I think is new is probably going to be very bad. And you cannot be also so proud that somehow you don't listen to anything or you don't learn anything. I think creativity can be taught by providing some problems when people do not know the answer, or formulating problems in a way that somehow are not clearly formulated in text and so on. And then you can see that sometimes, for example, when I give homeworks, when I was at Harvard teaching in the 80s, the exam, I just gave the exam on Friday morning, and I asked them to go home. I come back on Tuesday. At nine in the morning to give me the answer. And I made them promise that they were not going to talk to each other. They could look at some books, but they would not talk to other. And none of the problems that I gave them existed in books because there were research problems that you could fail, that failed. So there were such problems that are very interesting but when you finish solving them at the end of the answer, it's not very interesting. And that they really loved. That's what it is, creativity. It's an interesting problem that you pose. They do not know that that way of solving it doesn't work, but it's an interesting way of exploring it and learning in three days something very interesting. I gave a problem recently about, for example, why the moon has always the same face. Most people don't even know it. But this is what you might call a lofty lockdown. We had the lockdown with COVID, but the moon is always looking at us with the same phase because it goes around itself in exactly the time it goes round the Earth. That's a very interesting phenomenon that most people don't know how to explain. So I give that as an exam in a qualifying. Of course, with enough hints so that within three hours they could get it. And then they loved it because they never understood or tried to think. They had not even noticed that it's the case. But once they noticed, then how could you explain that? It's not based on quantum mechanics. It's all based on cosmology. It's based on simple conservation of angular momentum and the tides. So they finally understood the tides, but not the tines on Earth, it's the tine on the Moon. That's the way I like to motivate people, they have the tools and then you give them a problem that may fail or may not fail, but they do not know the answer ahead of time.
Speaker 4 [00:48:08] So, you said something to us many months ago when we talked on Zoom with a fabulous example of artists fragile and sciences not. You said that if Einstein would have eventually that theory would have come to the fore, but if Beethoven had died at the age of We never would have had the opportunity to do this, could you? Say that back to us.
Speaker 1 [00:48:40] I mean, you said it earlier. Right, right. Getting, getting, and getting. Yep.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:48:43] Let me give you an example about creativity, or about fragility, and perhaps inevitability in science. I think that maybe in biology and other areas, people will discuss this about inevitability. But this in the basic science of physics, imagine, for example, that people have not invented relativity, and general relativity. But we know quantum mechanics. All atomic clocks are based on quantum mechanics, So then you say, well, we're going to do the GPS. And then the GPS, you notice that, of course, well, these satellites go at 2,000 kilometers an hour. And then they are about 20,000 kilometers above from the ground. There are 26 of them going around. And then you notice all the clocks don't work. No, never, because what you find, for example, is that if you don't take into account the spatial relativity, then what you'll find is that the error in where you are is what is called 7,500 nanoseconds, which is 7, 500 feet. That's pretty far, but if you don't think into account that the corrections to the way time runs in relativity, we're going to be ahead above the Earth, you lose 45,000 feet, 45, 000 nanosecond. So eventually people would have found that the way time runs depends on where you are and the level of speed. And eventually after decades, hundreds of physicists and mathematicians and engineers, you'd have constructed general relativity and special relativity. So that's what I'm saying about the inevitability. It would have taken maybe 200 years, but doesn't matter. The issue is that eventually it would be there. In the case of art, it happens in a sense in somebody's mind. Some of this vision could be of the world or could be of music or structure. And that's something that unless it is taken care of and helped, it will never happen again. So that's the fragility of art. So to a certain extent, it's more important if you like to protect art and to foster it than science because at the end, science will happen whether you like it or not.
Speaker 4 [00:50:52] I have one other question, and it has to do with CERN, where you spent some amount of time. From those experiences, what are your takeaways about how art, science, and creativity can intersect?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:51:09] Well, I think that they inspire each other. Or somehow, you know, sometimes art can be first something that helps you focus on something else. So it's something which somehow, it also completes your personality. I think that it's very difficult to imagine someone who is only doing mathematics or only doing science because there are many, you know, once you start to do creative things you also appreciate creativity in plastic sciences or other things so there is always some artistic side to any scientist that I know. It's very rare that you have someone who's kind of one-dimensional and also I think the artists appreciate that creative aspect of science and frequently they like to be inspired by it. So I think the good thing is not to unify, like some, you know, there's Arthur Miller and some other people who write in his books that eventually science and art will be unified. I think that's complete nonsense. Sorry, Arthur. I think important thing is that, you now, they inspire each other. Because we work together in exploring different realities. But we all share those realities. So some describe them with some tools, and some describe with different tools. That's, you, know, at CERN, it was not long ago that we started having, oh, that's my, That's my wife.
Speaker 1 [00:52:24] No, no, I'll get it later.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:52:26] She knows that I'm interviewed, so she probably just realized that she is.
Speaker 1 [00:52:30] Have you done it?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:52:33] So anyway, I think that this is the nice thing about, at CERN, they started a few years ago having an artist in residence. And the idea was not to, you know, probably sometimes scientists are patronizing. Because it seems that, you have to tell the world what they don't know, and this and that. Well, that's not the point. The idea was to have this person for three months with us, coming for lunch. Sometimes they did an exhibit, sometimes they were, or not, just talking. And then eventually, if they did something that was inspired by CERN, well, sometimes they would make a little presentation or they would give us some painting or something or something. Because I think that that's the best way to communicate. Then you can have prices, you can a contest, and then this and that, but publicity. And it worked pretty well. I was working with Chevy Conductor, this group of, you know, a couple who does all kinds of sculptures and so on. And they were trying to learn from what we do. So about magnetic fields, about quantum mechanics, and so on. So most of the time I was helping them with their misconceptions of quantum mechanics because they have read some ways of talking about quantum mechanic that this is like voodoo physics. It's not voodo. I mean, it works very well. We understand why it works, so don't think about it. And sometimes they were telling me about representation, for example, how to visualize things. So when I was talking about how represent certain things. They had incredibly interesting ideas of how to represent three-dimensionally some ideas you had in your mind but you were not able to reproduce either with sound or with images and so on. So I think that the good thing about having artists and scientists together is to keep a dialog going and to inspire each other and to support each other.
Speaker 1 [00:54:18] When you were there Let's just, here we go.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:54:55] I keep on buying, yeah.
Speaker 1 [00:54:59] It doesn't matter when others don't.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:55:01] They're probably stuck somewhere.
Speaker 1 [00:55:03] Yeah, they're right here in there. It's funny, it doesn't, I can't read it very much, but it is there.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:55:28] It normally doesn't last that long.
Speaker 1 [00:55:34] When you were there, did you encounter, there's a Dutch designer named Joris van Herpen, she's another friend of Ari's, was she, she was in Sarah for a while as a visiting guest.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:55:45] I'm not sure if I interacted with her. Arianna brought me many, many artists to talk to them, and I gave some lectures, and this and that. But I'm no sure. I don't remember her. Well, another one more story, just looking for her. No, no, Arianna was a very good friend. Thank you very much for your attention.
Speaker 1 [00:56:01] Yeah, yeah, that's good. Any other questions?
Speaker 3 [00:56:09] Because we talk about
Speaker 1 [00:56:10] about failure a bit. This is a fairly obvious question. We learn from failure, do we not? If you don't have failure, you're not going to learn anything.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:56:23] It is true that whenever you work in any of these creative areas, science, you do not know whether you are going to succeed or not. But often you learn more from your failures than from your successes. Because from your failure you understand what you really do not understand. So sometimes, if you are used to getting A's and A-flashes in all your exams, you do it most of the time because you know that there is an answer. Sometimes, for example, people are extremely good in performing in exams, but they are lousy researchers. Because in a sense, they have this assurance that the answer is there. And if you haven't been listening to the teacher and so on and so forth, you will know exactly how to get there. But the problem is in when you're trying to solve a problem that has no solution yet. No teacher, this is a solution and go this way. So when you fail solving it, then you say, now I really understand why what I was doing doesn't work. And then you understand much better what your own knowledge. That will make your knowledge better. Your understanding of the laws of nature or the understanding of mathematics or even your understanding of all the tools, it gets better. So it's like a form of training. And I think that's something which everybody experiences. You can spend one day, or one year, or two years trying to solve a problem using some particular technique. And then you realize after a year, I didn't understand it. It's never going to give the solution because there was something fundamental or something, whatever, that I really had not understood. So this is a good, it's another eureka moment. Maybe it's in the negative sense. But at the end of the day it's good because it helps you understand or harness better. The tools and the concepts that we use.
Speaker 1 [00:58:05] What do you see is the difference between a scientist and an engineer?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [00:58:09] Well, I have to be careful with this. I think that, well, I think an engineer would call them more as an applied scientist. Sometimes they think that engineers are, again, the linear thing. This is the science, and it's trivial to solve a problem. And that's what engineers do. And people just, you know, you listen to the big bang theory. You always find that Sheldon Cooper that engineers, they program IT in particular, they don't know anything. That's not true. I mean, I think that, uh, they really play a crucial role, also very creative, because not only they are, see, they have a challenge, because they have problem to solve that is useful. If you're trying to solve, for example, the problem of black holes, it's not very useful, at least as we know, so you can keep on procrastinating for a long time, but you have to solve how to construct a particular bridge in some complicated terrain, you have solve it in a certain amount of time. And in that sense, it's remarkable how the engineers are able to absorb that knowledge and then create the tools and use it to create new things. You can imagine, the laws of electromagnetism and condensed matter were known, but then the investment of the computer chip, or the computer architectures, microcircuits and so on, that's not trivial, even though you like the physics, the basic physics was there. I'll give you an example. There's a fundamental law describing a matter. We see this is quantum mechanics and it's based on an equation which is called the Schrodinger equation. Schroeder equation, I could write you the Schrodinger equation for that table, for all the atoms and molecules in that table. But then, if you do like this, you hear sound. I cannot derive that from that equation. It's not useful. So sometimes, you really have to. I mean, one thing that is very important in understanding science, at least that's the way we practice it now. Is that you always have to separate scales. So you see different scales have different laws. You have to make sure that they are compatible. You don't try to describe the flow of water using the Serenade equation. You use hydrodynamics, Navier-Stokes, and so on. You have make sure they are consistent. So one thing is to have the basic laws, and the other thing is how to apply them to solve practical problems. That's where the engineers are absolute masters.
Speaker 4 [01:00:24] Do you think in that context that the notion of STEM, STEM subjects, STEM learning, girls for STEM, lumping them all together is a bad idea, a good idea?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [01:00:39] The important thing is not to make rules that are too rigid. I think it's good to have all these things together because it's different parts of human creativity or of human activity. So to have science, technology, mathematics, and so on is really great. People for some reason hate mathematics. But mathematics, most of the time it's because it is not taught properly. Or people are, physics, you're a physicist, oh God, I hated physics. Well, maybe that's because you were not taught properly, like I said, I hate music. Why do you hate music? But maybe you don't like this particular composer, but there's nothing wrong with music. It is your problem, not the problem of music. And also, sometimes, you don't know what you're missing. So I think the good thing about the stem is be designed in a unified and not pretentious way. It's very good because it opens all these horizons. That's what is enriching the yarn to really flourish. So it has to be always like a compliment. That's my way of looking at things.
Speaker 1 [01:01:39] Anybody else? Just get about 20 seconds of just silence. OK. Don't catch it, I have one more question I forgot about. Yes. I know, I know. One of our stories is about pipe organs. The what? Pipe organs. Pipe organ, yes. Pipe Organs, which as you know in 1750, that was the most complex. Fantastic.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [01:02:12] Fantastic. Yes, yes, totally. It's still the day.
Speaker 1 [01:02:16] So do you think about pipeline? I mean, is it something you follow or is it just another instance?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [01:02:21] I would love to learn how to play it, but the problem is I don't have the time. So I've read about it, I've written about Bach music, and I can even follow how to do with the feet. So I know the technique. But then you have all these things, two different instruments, and unfortunately my day, like everybody else's, has only 24 hours. I have a lot of crappy administration to do as well. If I want to do music, I really go to the instrument. Some people will say, why don't you come and play with us for a quartet and say, I'm not reliable, because it's not my profession. And if you play in a quartette or a trio and so on, you have to be reliable. And then you play every Wednesday at such and such time, and I travel. Then my wife is also a scientist, and then we have all kinds of things. I don't have a schedule that I can say, OK, I can spend every Wednesday, at 5, I will be with you for two hours.
Speaker 1 [01:03:15] When you go sit in an orchestra in a place and hear a real big, a pipe organ playing Bach, just tell us what that feels like.
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [01:03:25] Well, I mean, it feels fantastic. I mean I really like it because I mean it's even more grandiose than the piano. It has, it's like a, the piano is an orchestra but I mean it's not really an orchestra. The organ is a real orchestra because you have all the instruments that you can, you know, with all the different pipes and so on. So the piano, in a sense, is quantized music, because it's in half tones. You have 12 half tones each octave, and you repeat the equal temperament. But that's not the violin. And in fact, there are some musicologists who say that somehow equal temperaments killed harmony. Because if you look at string instruments or instruments, there is a continuum. And then there are things that you can play in a violin, that you play on the piano, it sounds awful because of this quantization. So it's a compromise. You can get many things, but not that. And the organ is free from that. So you are able to really recreate a full orchestra, which can sound more like a piano, like a harpsichord, like a violin like a flute, like an oboe, with two hands and two feet.
Speaker 1 [01:04:35] What about this? What about the immersion?
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé [01:04:38] No, no, I mean sometimes you almost feel like crying, especially in some of these big fugues with all this passion. And so listen to some of the Bach passions. I mean, it's very difficult not to have a physical reaction. Emotional, because sometimes you don't get that in other instruments. I love to be able to play, but as I said, I only have one life. I'm 24 hours every day.
