Lindau: The teachings of the savants

Marie Curie once said that "Science is about things, and not people". While this statement is true and profound, the fruits of science are unmistakably linked to their human origins, postmodernist relativism notwithstanding. The scientists who make discoveries are human beings, and they shoulder their share of foibles and successes, petty rivalries and forthcoming generosity, despair and triumph. Their life displays cycles that any young researcher will go through in his or her future career...

...more

Lindau: Who is the joke going to be on?

When the controversial and talented physicist Edward Teller was doing a PhD. with the great Werner Heisenberg at the University of Leipzig, the question asked at the end of every group meeting that focused on a complex sequence of problems was "Wo ist der Witz?", supposed to be translated as "What is the point"? but more correctly translated as "What is the joke?". The joke part of it consisted of turning a wry eye at the world, donning the hat of the court jester who laughs even as the fire that he predicted would engulf the world rages on. The question about global warming that we ask is also "Wo ist der Witz"? and we only hope that the joke is not upon us and we can actually still get the last laugh. Whether we might was the topic of discussion of a panel on global warming on the final day of the 59th Meeting of Nobel Laureates at Lindau...

...more

Big day

I think I at least partly know now what August 15, 1947 must have felt like.

Lindau: From fullerenes to global education

When I visit my favourite restaurant for lunch or dinner, I usually order a legitimate food item from the main course. But once in a while, just to indulge, I order a sample platter of appetizers. The appetizers don't always provide the deep satisfaction that I get from eating a proper, expensive food item. But they provide me with a different kind of unique satisfaction; they give me a glimpse of what's new, what's possible. They provide a view of the diversity that can emerge in a plate of bite-sized chunks. And through their frequent novelty, they give me hope that there are new possibilities on the horizon. These appetizers constitute occasional but necessary fodder. Sir Harold Kroto's talk was one of the most satisfying platter of appetizers I have sampled, and I had not even ordered it...

...more

Lindau: The way dinner should be

When you first meet Aaron Ciechanover, he appears to have the distracted air of a man who feels slightly inconvenienced to be in whatever situation has been apparently imposed on him. But this preoccupied demeanor belies a mind which is ready to hold forth on a disparate variety of topics with infinite verve and enthusiasm and which is not reluctant to be politically incorrect, provocative and utterly honest. And it hides a broad smile which is very readily revealed at the mention of a favourite incident or fact.

If there is one word to describe the Israeli doctor, biochemist and Nobel Laureate it's passion, and this passion is pronounced no matter what the topic of discussion; from protein degradation to languages and traveling, from politics to history. Whether we were talking about protein structure or Israel-Palestine relations, Ciechanover's thoughts were always opinionated, honest, cogent, provocative and without a dull shade in them. This is the kind of stimulating person that you always want as a dinner companion...

...more

Wine, wisdom and wish-fulfillment at Lindau

This cannot get any better. There's everything here; the opportunity to interact with dozens of Nobel prizewinners in a very informal setting, spectacular views of the alps bordered by three countries (Germany, Switzerland and Austria), nice bicycle rides, a charming hotel to stay in, polonaises to dance to, great banquets with varied food and drink and a festive atmosphere, really nice people to interact with (my co-bloggers are super-friendly and helpful) and dinner with small groups of students and Nobel laureates. I could not have asked for anything more. Here's me with my wunderbar fellow bloggers. I also ran into Bora and PZ Myers of Pharyngula and had a nice walk with them around town. Both of them are attending and vigorously blogging as usual and Bora was also part of a panel discussion on open science access.



This year India is a partner country and has sent the third-largest delegation of students, about 43. Guests included the minister for human resources Kapil Sibal and the minister for science and technology S. E. Chavan. As a partner country India hosted a wonderful banquet yesterday with lots of Indian food, followed by an Indian dance performance. This was followed by a Lindau tradition; a polonaise in which the ladies and the gentlemen form lines and ascend the stage from both sides. The gentlemen pick up a flower and present it to whichever lady happens to be in front of them in the center of the stage. The polonaise then breaks into a waltz, and the dancing continues late into the night. There is purportedly ghastly photographic evidence of a certain individual trying to waltz.

Most importantly, you cannot help but be taken in by the picture of hundreds of students from every possible country interacting so enthusiastically with each other, underscoring the global nature and brotherhood of science. Indians interact with Belorussians, Americans interact with Poles, Chinese interact with Russians, Zambians interact with Germans. And Nobel Prize winners participate in the dances and interact with everyone else. The atmosphere is truly international and sparkles with verve.

Today I had the opportunity to conduct an informal interview with Prof. Peter Agre whom I had also met last year. But this year it was one-on-one for 40 mins and was truly enjoyable since Prof. Agre is an exceptionally witty and nice person. You can read about the interview here.You can find the rest at the official Lindau blog, including all my posts (my name is right below each). Updating will continue all week long. Keep watching that spot for more!

Blogging from ground zero- day one

I have finally arrived in Lindau, Bavaria to offer my thoughts on the meeting of minds between 500 students, 23 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and the handful of acting scientific journalists such as myself. The journey itself was uneventful but very long. It took me almost the same time to get from Frankfurt to this little island as it took me to get from New York City to Frankfurt. I had to change trains twice, first at Mannheim and then at Stuttgart. Plus I think I am still to savor the punctuality of German transport since my train was delayed by more than half an hour at Stuttgart and then twice more at miscellaneous stops. However I have to admit that this still beats driving or any form of personal transport.

I cannot yet offer my thoughts on the environment Lindau provides, but one thing stuck out as I passed over a bridge; a spectacular view of the Alps on the other side of the Bodensee. Again, I have yet to see around, but an island at the base of the alps which is located in Germany, Austria and Switzerland cannot exactly be dull and ugly, can it?

I have already started blogging on the Lindau blog website and I would prefer not to cross-post that material in other places. Here is the link to the website and to my first three posts:

Lindau blogs website

Exemplifying apprenticeship; The Lindau meetings

Diversity of talks; diversity of science

Surfaces, ammonia, ozone and scientific destiny

Live-blogging starts tomorrow! Here is the program for tomorrow:

"The partisans have ampicillin". Really?

The Russian covert antibiotic program must have been hugely successful



In an effort to stave off the boredom that inevitably accompanies adjustment to a new environment, I was watching the WW2-era movie "Defiance" yesterday. The movie is based on an astounding true story about two Jewish brothers (played by Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber) who hide and lead a band of Jewish refugees through the forests of Belorussia for two years and thwart the Nazis' plans for their extermination. Surviving on food killed and obtained in the jungle, defending themselves with stolen small firearms and occasionally seeking the help of partisans from the Red Army, the Bielski brothers and their group provide one of the most exemplary stories of resistance against the Nazis during the war.

So far so good, and the movie is not bad at all. But during one scene my ears suddenly perked up. There is a winter epidemic of typhus threatening to wipe out the population. A nurse tells Craig that the disease is spread by lice and without medical attention the patients will certainly die. To prevent this, she says, Craig and his group must borrow ampicillin from the Red Army. "The partisans have ampicillin", she says with hope and concern.

Which is all fine, except that ampicillin was not even known in 1942. It was introduced only in 1961. Even penicillin was a closely guarded secret in 1942. Plus I am not even sure if typhus is properly treated with beta-lactam antibiotics of the penicillin type.

I was further chagrined when in order to confirm this I visited the Wikipedia page on penicillin. While it otherwise looked ok, it also said that the first total synthesis of penicillin was achieved by the legendary chemist Robert Burns Woodward at Harvard. Again, not true. Woodward synthesized cephalosporin. It was John Sheehan from MIT who synthesized penicillin after a mammoth effort of 15 years. The error is now rectified.

Seems the directors of Defiance and the editors of the Wikipedia penicillin page have the same problem of fact-checking.

Presence of absence is not absence of presence

The proximate cause of my absence from this blog has been the tribulations of settling down in the most lawless state in the country. Just kidding, but two things about the Garden State are axiomatic truths:

A: The shortest route from A to B is most generally not the shortest route from B to A. Heisenberg would have been pleased. Traffic circles, one-way streets, deer roadkill on Route 202 gradually disintegrating for three days, drivers who must be thinking they are competing in Formula-1 and potholes on roads that seem like they are designed to retain 1920s charm all make the picture endearingly complete.

B: If you are in Princeton you should expect to see photos of Einstein eating ice cream, Oppenheimer licking his fingers after eating buffalo wings at Chuck's and John von Neumann balancing a paper cone filled with popcorn on his generous belly.

Ok, I made the last two up, but I did see the first one; Einstein somewhat disinterestedly licking an ice cream cone in one of those small, family-owned ice cream stores on Nassau Street whose name I will have to look up again. Actually this fact about Einstein should not surprise one at all: the man took as much pleasure in ice cream and all the simple joys of life as in tensor calculus. In the 1950s, according to his own admission, Princeton was a "quaint ceremonial village, occupied by demigods on stilts". The quaintness still somewhat lingers but the stilts have definitely given way to big cars that block traffic and pedestrian access. As for the rest of the state, what was George Merck thinking?

I hope to explore more of the village on the weekend, after I have finally moved into an apartment that actually is close to work.

For the love of science

So I am trying to find possible groups interested in science meeting up in NJ and my friend suggests this site called meetup.com. So I type in my zip code and ask the site to find people or groups interested in "science" within 25 miles. Among the twenty or so hits are included "The NY/NJ group for parents with science careers" (11 members) and "Red Bank Life Science Discussion Group" (4 members). Good for them, but almost everything else includes things like

The Monroe Township Law of Attraction Meetup Group (28 members)
Princeton NJ ~Tantra Awakening ~The Art Of Conscious Loving (42 members)
Princeton Holistic Clinic (98 members)
The Central New Jersey Astrology Meetup Group (6 members)
The Healers' Guild (37 'adepts')

Both the predominance of these groups and their member counts indicate that the 5+ years that I spent learning and doing science in graduate school were futile after all. But at least it does seem that we are catching up with astrology.

State of the garden

I am finally in the Garden State after a rather protracted road trip amply filled with fever and a cold brought on by all the dust stirred up during packing. The first thing I rather surprisingly notice is how much more tiring it is to drive here compared to Atlanta where the drivers are supposed to be rather rash. Plus, the constant exits and bifurcations on several different highways, routes and streets that one needs to traverse to travel quite non-linearly between any two points is frustrating. I am also hoping to actually see some gardens in the garden state. My hundreds of books also made the journey here although I have to still check how many of them are still in pristine condition. And I am still looking for an apartment while I am comfortably imposing myself on my cousin at his place.

For now I am aiming to hang out a little at the bookstores and cafes in nearby Princeton, hoping to meet some like-minded people. If you want to pointlessly muse and pontificate and don't feel scared in meeting strange new people, drop me a line. I would also appreciate it if anyone could bring their wisdom to bear on three things important to me; good bookstores (other than the ubiquitous Borders), good movie theaters where one can especially catch off-beat or foreign movies, and good restaurants and cafes where one can stare blankly at nothingness for hours and read.

The 2009 Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting

It is a great privilege for me to be invited to live-blog and write about the 2009 Lindau Nobel Prize Winners meeting in the scenic Bavarian town of Lindau, Germany. Since 1951, dozens of Nobel laureates have been joined every year by about 500 carefully chosen students from around the world for a full week of informal discussions, seminars, lunches and lectures where students and Nobelists mingle with each other and one can find at least one laureate on every square foot of the floor no matter what direction he looks.

This year's focus is on chemistry and an august list of no less than 22 Nobel Prize winners in the subject is going to gather in this scenic town. I am honored to be invited because of my background in chemistry and blogging and relish the opportunity like nothing else. I am supposed to be on a small team of 7 journalists and bloggers blogging the event for scienceblogs.com and scienceblogs.de. Along with Matthew Chalmers who is an editor and writer for several publications like New Scientist and the Times, I will largely be responsible for writing about the event in English for Scienceblogs.com. The writing will include both general observations about the meeting as well as descriptions of the talks and seminars. Hopefully I can bring it all together.

Nobel laureates have long been a particular interest of mine. People interested in this kind of a thing collect Nobel statistics like sports and stock market statistics; it was only when exploring facts about youngest, oldest, tallest, most awarded, famous father-son duos, and most neglected non-winners that I realised the allure of cricket or sensex figures.

Calling the list of scheduled speakers at Lindau stellar is a futile and redundant effort because every one of them has won the highest honor in his or her field. Many of the names are familiar and not only have I long admired these people, but I have even directly and indirectly used their work in my own research, as have thousands of scientists and students around the world. Now we will all experience a connection to our work like no other.

In any case, this is as magnificent a concatenation of minds as you can expect to find and I am immensely looking forward to it. The meeting is going to be held from June 28 - July 3. 22 Nobelists in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. It does not get better than this. I will naturally keep on updating.

And you wonder why atheists bristle when the religious call them 'intolerant'

A very reasonable religious woman writes in on a show to ask Pat Robertson how she could strike a middle ground between herself and her boyfriend who is an atheist. He has stuck by her for a long time and the two obviously are quite close. Do we need to guess how the Reverend Robertson responds? Remember that this guy is still worshipped by millions of people. And they say Richard Dawkins is 'intolerant' of religious people.

Bonanza!

Thanks to the generosity of Chris, I am getting a superb collection of music from BMG music at an incredible discount. This includes:

Mozart- The Complete Symphonies: Neville Marriner, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. I remember the sublime pleasure that I had when as a child I listened to the 36th (Linz) and 40th symphony conducted by Marriner. Now I will be the ecstatic owner of 12 CDs with all the symphonies. Of course this will add to my 40 CD Mozart Complete Works set (Brilliant Classics) but this is Marriner and Marriner imparts a light and fleet-footed, ephemeral touch to Mozart which suits him very well in my opinion. It would probably not suit Beethoven.

Beethoven- The Late Quartets: Takacs Some of the most melancholy music ever written. The Late Quartet in C Sharp Minor will make you reach for the bottle and is surely the greatest depressing piece of music I have ever heard. Now I will hear Takacs play it. This is a 6 CD set.

Mozart- The Complete Piano Sonatas: Mitsuko Uchida Who could forget the famous and widely played Piano Sonata no. 11. Now I will have all of them, played by the stunning Uchida.

As Einstein used to say, Beethoven created his music while Mozart simply found it. Found it. Found it...as an eternal part of the universe...

FDA does, and should, stick to only science

In a welcome reversal of a key politics-driven Bush era mandate, the FDA has approved the Plan B morning-after emergency contraception pill for 17-year olds. Previously the reluctance of FDA to approve the product had led a senior official to rightly resign. Not surprisingly, this decision drew wrath from conservative groups who say that the pill would "encourage promiscuity". This statement is rather typical of conservative statements opposing abortion and promotion of contraceptive measures in school, in spite of the fact that abstinence-only programs have been shown to essentially cause no change or even an increase in "promiscuity".

But here's the thing, and it should be clear all along; the FDA should stick to science and nothing else. Just as the conservative FDA officials during the Bush era were utterly out of line opposing Plan B because of political and religious interests, so should liberals also not applaud the FDA decision as a moral value judgement. The business of the FDA is to determine the efficacy and safety of medical products, period. The moment it starts to pontificate on the moral or political value of its decision its immediately sets itself on a slippery slope.

So just like the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education should stick to demonstrating the evidence for evolution and lack of evidence for ID/creationism and not pass judgement on whether science and religion are compatible, so should the FDA stick to the science behind the approval of medical products. Not making political or religious statements, either conservative or liberal, would be in the safe and best interests of both the FDA and society.

The Pope of Cosmology 'very ill'

For a 67 year old man with ALS who has already defied medical science, this is not good news at all. Remember what happened to Christopher Reeve. When you are in a condition like this, even otherwise normal ailments may become life-threatening.

I have been recently reading a lot about Hawking in Leonard Susskind's splendid book "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics". The rather grandiose title of the book obscures a perfectly entertaining and informative romp through the world of black holes; this is about as close as possible to black hole thermodynamics, string theory and quantum mechanics that we laymen can get without being drowned in a whirlpool of math. Susskind who is a professor at Stanford tells the story of the paradox of information falling into a black hole and supposedly disappearing with lots of verve, hilarious personal anecdotes and tributes to famous physicists. Being a prime participant in the debate with Hawking on the other side, he is in a unique position to tell the story. His recounting of the way the physicist Jacob Bekenstein used high-school math to derive the formula for the entropy of black holes is astounding; very rarely has someone used such simple physics and mathematics to discover such profound relationships and the act reminded me of Bell's Theorem, another spectacular twentieth-century physics result that can essentially be derived using high-school mathematics.

But more than anyone else, it is Hawking's figure that looms large in the book. Susskind describes how his physical disability, his strange disembodied computer voice and his astonishingly brilliant and creative mind guarantees the kind of reverence and silence wherever he appears that otherwise only seems to be reserved for the Pope. Susskind vividly describes a typical Q & A session after a Hawking lecture; Hawking's physical condition means that he can compose even a "yes/no" answer only after several minutes, and what's striking is that during such times Susskind has witnessed audiences of thousands maintain stand-still silence with not a whisper spoken for sometimes fifteen minutes while the great man painfully communicates himself. Hawking may be the only living scientist whose presence provokes utter and rapt silence and attention that one would observe only during religious prayer. No wonder Hawking is compared to God by many, a comparison which only makes him uncomfortable. Susskind describes a particular time in a restaurant where a passerby went to his knees and virtually kissed Hawking's feet. Needless to say Hawking was embarrassed and galled.

In any case, we can only hope that Hawking feels better. However in one way we can rest assured; Stephen Hawking's name has been etched in the annals of science forever. That's the power of ideas. Their timelessness assures us that they remain youthful and vibrant, irrespective of the age and condition of their source. But let's all hope Hawking springs back from this illness to his mischievous, witty self.

Reading C P Snow and The Two Cultures

Over at The Intersection blog which I often read and comment on, Chris Mooney (author of "The Republican War on Science") has initiated an informal reading of C. P. Snow's "The Two Cultures". Anyone who is interested is more than welcome to read the influential and very short lecture and blog or comment on it. The schedule is listed in the post. The recommended edition is the Canto edition, with a very readable introduction by Stefan Collini. Incidentally it was this version that I read many years ago (a second-hand copy picked up from one of those delightful book sales at The Institute of Engineers in Pune). Time now for a re-reading.

I have encountered Snow in two other interesting books. The first one- "The Physicists: A Generation that Changed the World"- was authored by him and contains clear and abundant photographs as well as recollections and insights on some of the most famous physicists of the century whom he closely knew. In this for instance I read his generous assessment of Enrico Fermi that captures the supreme greatness of the man's talents and achievements

"If Fermi had been born twenty years earlier, it is possible to envisage him first discovering Rutherford's nucleus and then discovering Bohr's atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole"

Snow also thought that Robert Oppenheimer's real tragedy was not his sidelining or victimization during the 1950s witch hunts but the fact that he would have thrown away all his fame, brilliance and glory if he had the privilege to make one timeless discovery like Pauli's exclusion principle.

Another book with Snow in it is a fascinating piece of "scientific fiction" written by John Casti. "The Cambridge Quintet: A Work Of Scientific Speculation" features four famous scientists and intellectuals- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, J B S Haldane and Alan Turing- being invited over to Snow's house for a multi-course dinner. As the dinner unfolds, so do the conversations between these stalwarts. The topic is artificial intelligence, and the participants hold forth in myriad and fascinating ways on the subject with excursions that not surprisingly take them into avenues like the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysical questions. Very much worth reading.

In any case, I am looking forward to reading The Two Cultures again and writing about it. Anyone who is interested is more than welcome. The entire lecture is 50 pages and could be read in a few hours of thoughtful contemplation. The topic is as relevant today as it was then, which explains the lecture's enduring appeal. The consequences though could be vastly more pronounced.

The long and winding road...

...is at an end, but a new road begins. The last many few years have been difficult in more than one way. Books, science and friends have sustained me well during that time. So many thanks to all those who were involved in myriad ways.