An August Experience
Posted Jul5-12 at 04:59 AM by HMS
August 2 2008 will remain as one of the unforgettable days of my life. It was not a day of any professional achievement. Neither was it one that marked any memorable personal event. It was just another weekend day that I chose to spend at the Princeton University campus, like any other casual curious visitor. It turned out be one of the most fulfilling days for years to come.
I had known that Princeton is amidst the highest ranked universities across the world and belonged to the famed Ivy League institutions. To visit it and check an item off my list of places to see was not the reason I decided to board the NE corridor train from Penn station towards Trenton. I like to believe that the superstars in the field of Physics, who once walked and still walk the floral gardens of this beautiful campus, had thrust their mighty gravitational pull on a passing pebble and tossed it there.
All technology and the rest of science stand on the platform that is Physics, the most fundamental of sciences. The central motivation of this science is to answer questions like “Why is there space?” “Why is there time?” “Why is there a Universe?” and so on, which lead to satisfy the natural curiosities of the human mind, such as “What is this existence all about?” “Why are we here?” “What are we supposed to be doing with our time?” and so on. Since I have placed this science on a high pedestal, it is natural for me regard physicists as Gods. Physics itself has been standing on the shoulders of giants like Newton, Einstein, Feynman and more recently on Hawking, Witten and so on.
Newton laid the foundations of classical mechanics through his laws of motion and gravity; Einstein erected a pillar for modern physics by formulating the General Theory of Relativity; a group of other scientists built the other pillar called Quantum Physics through a sequence of seemingly small yet brilliant discoveries. Just as a reader of spiritual text is drawn towards visiting a place of worship, I began to host the desire of visiting places where these greats lived, taught and transformed the way man thought about this world.
Upon reaching Princeton railway station, I took a shuttle to the campus and thought that it was a long ride. I had decided to take the Orange Key service, a one-hour tour of the campus that had a student guide. Seated in a hall with an impressive university brochure in hand, which incidentally informed me that Michelle Obama was an alumnus, I was asked to join one of 3 groups, each of which will have one grad student as a guide. I chose to join one of them and was pleasantly surprised to learn that my guide was a Physics grad named Andrew Peck. Not bad.
We went through the regular spots – the department buildings, the dining halls, the playground etc. – and Andrew had some inside information on each of these that a common man wouldn’t know. We passed by one of the lecture halls when he informed us that Einstein conducted his classes there. I stood there and thought how the great man with his crumpled hair would have waved a piece of chalk like an orchestra conductor and conveyed great ideas of space-time warping to his spellbound audience. I had many questions for the grad student, mostly on the works of Physics professors, and he answered them to the best of his knowledge.
When the tour ended after an hour and the crowd dispersed, I met Andrew separately and asked if I could visit the IAS. The Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton is an independent research center where Einstein lived and worked during the last days of his life. I had read of the great man’s futile quest to frame a Grand Unified Theory and refusal to accept the basic interpretations of Quantum Physics, that it is based on probabilities (“God does not play dice with the universe”). These landmark events in the world of Physics happened at IAS and at that time, I could feel the rich history surrounding the place beckoning me to pay a visit. Our guide was kind enough to print me out a map of the IAS, which I grabbed thankfully and made the move.
The walk towards IAS itself was a pleasant experience. It was a 15 minute stroll on a road paved amidst the woods called as Institute Lands, where I was privileged to the have the company of solitude. A brief downpour had just stopped and that had brought a few deer and bunnies from inside the forest to my eyes’ treat. Someone had thought of providing a tranquil ambiance for the scientists so that they can involve in deep research and inquiry into the higher problems of existence. Upon reaching my destination, I could see the professors’ houses and the academic offices embedded in a scenic lush green setting.
A SUV was parked by the lawn that overlooked a small beautiful pond, where a man had cast his fishing rod and was waiting patiently for the catch. A group of 3 Indian middle aged men were returning from the bank and I was driven by instinct to walk up to them and introduce myself. It was mildly exciting to learn that one of them was the Director of Computing Services at the Physics department, which meant he was rubbing shoulders with the heavyweights on a regular basis. His name is Vinod Gupta and he was acting as a Princeton guide to his two friends, nuclear scientists working in India who had had flown to visit him. After letting them know that I had a career in the software services field, I did not forget to tell them that I was also pursuing a part-time course in Astronomy. They seemed to be impressed and soon we were talking about the recent developments in Astrophysics and that presented ample opportunity for me to showcase my subject knowledge. I then departed and walked around the IAS buildings, taking my time and enjoying every moment of being there. After I had seen what I wanted to see of the IAS, it was time to head back home.
At this time, I met the group again and Vinod asked me if I wanted to join them for a visit to the Physics department. “Of course!” I told him and thanked him before hopping into the SUV along with his friends. We headed to the department office and walked along the corridors that were lined with chambers of Nobel laureates (Phillip Anderson, Val Fitch, Dan Tsui to name a few). It felt more than good to be in a place, one that was spearheading research in the most fundamental of sciences. We passed by the chambers of Ed Witten, who is considered as the greatest theoretical physicist in the world and is the research leader in Superstring theory. Just looking at the equations sprawled on the blackboard and the notes lying on the table gave me goose bumps, as I realized that this is the place where the modern day Einstein is redefining the way we understand this universe. We stopped at another cubicle where Vinod pointed us towards an archaic desktop and informed us that it belonged to the great John Wheeler. The late Wheeler worked will illustrious minds like Bohr, Einstein, Fermi etc., had Feynman, Thorne as his students and made important contributions to particle physics. He is also credited with coining the terms “black hole” “wormhole”, terms that have become common parlance in modern physics. Vinod pointed to a desk where Wheeler used to sit and wait for the car that picked him up and dropped him home. We then proceeded to see a group photo of Princeton physicists taken sometime in the late 1940s, where we could see all the great minds in one place.
After having basked in the pleasure of seeing these places, we headed down the road and stopped at 112, Mercer St. This is the place where Einstein spent the last days of his life when he worked in IAS. He did not want the house to be made a museum and so it remains just as a National historic landmark, befittingly occupied by another Nobel laureate. The next stop in our journey was the house of John Forbes Nash, the schizophrenic Economics genius, who won a Nobel for Game theory and subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind. That seemed to be the end of the day as it was getting dark and I had to head back home. We took some photographs for some good memories and I headed back to the Princeton station. Waiting for the train, I contemplated on the day’s happenings, as I watched two Amtrak trains crossing each other at a relative velocity of 200 mph sending shock waves over the platform, capping a great day.
When I started the tour, I did not think that I would come in close proximity to the core of something that I absolutely cherish. I do not wish to think that it was a sheer stroke of luck that brought me in contact with the right people at the right time. When I had read the great achievements of these scientists and admired their contributions to the world, I must also have planted the seed for a profound desire to come close to their lives. To this day, I believe in the force of that desire that drove me to visit the university and made me meet the right people at the right time to have a soul-filling experience. If there is anything that I learned from that episode, it is that if you believed strongly enough in something you want, the force of that belief will sweep you towards that.
I had known that Princeton is amidst the highest ranked universities across the world and belonged to the famed Ivy League institutions. To visit it and check an item off my list of places to see was not the reason I decided to board the NE corridor train from Penn station towards Trenton. I like to believe that the superstars in the field of Physics, who once walked and still walk the floral gardens of this beautiful campus, had thrust their mighty gravitational pull on a passing pebble and tossed it there.
All technology and the rest of science stand on the platform that is Physics, the most fundamental of sciences. The central motivation of this science is to answer questions like “Why is there space?” “Why is there time?” “Why is there a Universe?” and so on, which lead to satisfy the natural curiosities of the human mind, such as “What is this existence all about?” “Why are we here?” “What are we supposed to be doing with our time?” and so on. Since I have placed this science on a high pedestal, it is natural for me regard physicists as Gods. Physics itself has been standing on the shoulders of giants like Newton, Einstein, Feynman and more recently on Hawking, Witten and so on.
Newton laid the foundations of classical mechanics through his laws of motion and gravity; Einstein erected a pillar for modern physics by formulating the General Theory of Relativity; a group of other scientists built the other pillar called Quantum Physics through a sequence of seemingly small yet brilliant discoveries. Just as a reader of spiritual text is drawn towards visiting a place of worship, I began to host the desire of visiting places where these greats lived, taught and transformed the way man thought about this world.
Upon reaching Princeton railway station, I took a shuttle to the campus and thought that it was a long ride. I had decided to take the Orange Key service, a one-hour tour of the campus that had a student guide. Seated in a hall with an impressive university brochure in hand, which incidentally informed me that Michelle Obama was an alumnus, I was asked to join one of 3 groups, each of which will have one grad student as a guide. I chose to join one of them and was pleasantly surprised to learn that my guide was a Physics grad named Andrew Peck. Not bad.
We went through the regular spots – the department buildings, the dining halls, the playground etc. – and Andrew had some inside information on each of these that a common man wouldn’t know. We passed by one of the lecture halls when he informed us that Einstein conducted his classes there. I stood there and thought how the great man with his crumpled hair would have waved a piece of chalk like an orchestra conductor and conveyed great ideas of space-time warping to his spellbound audience. I had many questions for the grad student, mostly on the works of Physics professors, and he answered them to the best of his knowledge.
When the tour ended after an hour and the crowd dispersed, I met Andrew separately and asked if I could visit the IAS. The Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton is an independent research center where Einstein lived and worked during the last days of his life. I had read of the great man’s futile quest to frame a Grand Unified Theory and refusal to accept the basic interpretations of Quantum Physics, that it is based on probabilities (“God does not play dice with the universe”). These landmark events in the world of Physics happened at IAS and at that time, I could feel the rich history surrounding the place beckoning me to pay a visit. Our guide was kind enough to print me out a map of the IAS, which I grabbed thankfully and made the move.
The walk towards IAS itself was a pleasant experience. It was a 15 minute stroll on a road paved amidst the woods called as Institute Lands, where I was privileged to the have the company of solitude. A brief downpour had just stopped and that had brought a few deer and bunnies from inside the forest to my eyes’ treat. Someone had thought of providing a tranquil ambiance for the scientists so that they can involve in deep research and inquiry into the higher problems of existence. Upon reaching my destination, I could see the professors’ houses and the academic offices embedded in a scenic lush green setting.
A SUV was parked by the lawn that overlooked a small beautiful pond, where a man had cast his fishing rod and was waiting patiently for the catch. A group of 3 Indian middle aged men were returning from the bank and I was driven by instinct to walk up to them and introduce myself. It was mildly exciting to learn that one of them was the Director of Computing Services at the Physics department, which meant he was rubbing shoulders with the heavyweights on a regular basis. His name is Vinod Gupta and he was acting as a Princeton guide to his two friends, nuclear scientists working in India who had had flown to visit him. After letting them know that I had a career in the software services field, I did not forget to tell them that I was also pursuing a part-time course in Astronomy. They seemed to be impressed and soon we were talking about the recent developments in Astrophysics and that presented ample opportunity for me to showcase my subject knowledge. I then departed and walked around the IAS buildings, taking my time and enjoying every moment of being there. After I had seen what I wanted to see of the IAS, it was time to head back home.
At this time, I met the group again and Vinod asked me if I wanted to join them for a visit to the Physics department. “Of course!” I told him and thanked him before hopping into the SUV along with his friends. We headed to the department office and walked along the corridors that were lined with chambers of Nobel laureates (Phillip Anderson, Val Fitch, Dan Tsui to name a few). It felt more than good to be in a place, one that was spearheading research in the most fundamental of sciences. We passed by the chambers of Ed Witten, who is considered as the greatest theoretical physicist in the world and is the research leader in Superstring theory. Just looking at the equations sprawled on the blackboard and the notes lying on the table gave me goose bumps, as I realized that this is the place where the modern day Einstein is redefining the way we understand this universe. We stopped at another cubicle where Vinod pointed us towards an archaic desktop and informed us that it belonged to the great John Wheeler. The late Wheeler worked will illustrious minds like Bohr, Einstein, Fermi etc., had Feynman, Thorne as his students and made important contributions to particle physics. He is also credited with coining the terms “black hole” “wormhole”, terms that have become common parlance in modern physics. Vinod pointed to a desk where Wheeler used to sit and wait for the car that picked him up and dropped him home. We then proceeded to see a group photo of Princeton physicists taken sometime in the late 1940s, where we could see all the great minds in one place.
After having basked in the pleasure of seeing these places, we headed down the road and stopped at 112, Mercer St. This is the place where Einstein spent the last days of his life when he worked in IAS. He did not want the house to be made a museum and so it remains just as a National historic landmark, befittingly occupied by another Nobel laureate. The next stop in our journey was the house of John Forbes Nash, the schizophrenic Economics genius, who won a Nobel for Game theory and subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind. That seemed to be the end of the day as it was getting dark and I had to head back home. We took some photographs for some good memories and I headed back to the Princeton station. Waiting for the train, I contemplated on the day’s happenings, as I watched two Amtrak trains crossing each other at a relative velocity of 200 mph sending shock waves over the platform, capping a great day.
When I started the tour, I did not think that I would come in close proximity to the core of something that I absolutely cherish. I do not wish to think that it was a sheer stroke of luck that brought me in contact with the right people at the right time. When I had read the great achievements of these scientists and admired their contributions to the world, I must also have planted the seed for a profound desire to come close to their lives. To this day, I believe in the force of that desire that drove me to visit the university and made me meet the right people at the right time to have a soul-filling experience. If there is anything that I learned from that episode, it is that if you believed strongly enough in something you want, the force of that belief will sweep you towards that.
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