ARTICLES, IDEAS, REVIEWS: a brief selection
I’ve written on many other things, from how computers calculate pi, to tractor beams and dark energy, to “political” articles and blogs about topics such the environment, the link between capitalism and science, bias against women in science (my brief piece here was in response to the Yale University study referenced at the head of the piece), and more. I’ve also been able to touch on broader issues in my book reviews, such as the need for a scientifically literate public to deal with today’s problems of climate change, pandemics, bioterrorism, and cyber-insecurity; the risk of AI dehumanizing us; and gender and mathematics.
Links
Mathematical Analogies: What can they tell us about physical reality?
My mathematical research focused on classifying and analysing exact solutions of Einstein’s equations of gravity (that is, the theory of general relativity, or GR for short). I’m especially fascinated by the power of mathematical analogies, and whether they can reveal new insights into physical reality. In the case of GR, this includes mathematical analogies between Einstein’s equations and Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism, and I explained this idea briefly in Cosmos here, and in more detail in my article in Cosmos magazine No. 84.
For more technical details on these analogies, you can see my research papers here and here (where my colleagues and I first proposed the unproven conjecture I mentioned in my brief bio).
Einstein, Bohr, and the Origins of Entanglement
Quantum entanglement is the remarkable phenomenon where two particles with initially correlated properties, such as spin direction, seem to “communicate” with each other instantaneously, no matter how far apart they are. Einstein proposed this bizarre phenomenon as a thought experiment designed to show that quantum theory was flawed. Instead, he predicted the existence of a real physical phenomenon. You can see my Cosmos article on this here. Also, here and in some of the other articles below, the editors have trimmed my work for space, occasionally making it read less fluently than I’d have liked. So I was thrilled that this article also appeared in Best Australian Science Writing 2018. (Since then, the experimental work on the existence of entanglement, which I mentioned in my article, has been recognized in the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics.)
Thomas Harriot: The scientific genius who eschewed fame
Harriot is one of the most intriguing mathematicians in history, and he’s the subject of my book Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science, and of this article I wrote for The Conversation, to honour the 400th anniversary of his death. The article also appeared in Best Australian Science Writing 2022.
INTERVIEWS, TALKS, FESTIVALS
Over the years, I’ve given many talks to students, teachers, and other groups interested in science, including the Royal Society of Victoria, and an extraordinary symposium on women philosophers and scientists in Paderborn, Germany (you can see one of my Paderborn talks here.) I’ve also given radio and podcast interviews about the topics arising from my books – for example, on ABC RN (here, here, here, and here), and Historically Thinking (https://historicallythinking.org/episode-109-the-curiosities-of-thomas-harriot/).
I’ve also participated in Writers’ Festivals in Rome, Oxford, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Byron Bay. It is a wonderful experience to meet with readers and other writers at such festivals, and I treasure these interactions – and also the letters and emails I receive from interested readers. So many thanks to these engaged readers, who are the reason I keep on writing.
In 2020, I was invited to the Shanghai Literary Festival, and to celebrations of Thomas Harriot’s 400th anniversary in London, but Covid-19 put paid to those events. Similarly, I was unable to attend the symposium on Roanoke Island in North Carolina, where Harriot had spent a year living with the Algonquian people; I did send through the presentation you can see here, but I do wish I could have been there in person. Pandemics aside, however, the environmental cost of air travel is something of which I’ve always been conscious, and I’ve taken relatively few flights. But as the pandemic lockdowns also showed us, there’s no substitute for meeting like-minded people in person, and festivals have been vital to me as a regional writer isolated from the (urban Australian and northern hemisphere) mainstream.