Radiolab - Pass the Science

Episode Date: March 22, 2011

Richard Holmes went to Cambridge University intending to study the lives of poets. Until a dueling mathematician, and a dinner conversation composed entirely of gestures, changed his mind.

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I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Crilwich. This is Radio Lab, the podcast. Robert and I are about to go on tour, literally in a few hours, to L.A. and Seattle. Yep. But before we do, we leave you with, well, why don't you set it up? Well, this is just one of those crazy and wonderful conversations that just popped into being.

One of my favorite books of the last couple of years was a book called The Age of Wonder. It was written by Richard Holmes, and it describes a particular group of people. A bunch of people who kind of invented modern science sort of together in the 1780s, the 1790s and the early 1800s. a crazy and wonderful group balloonists and explorers and astronomers who believed that the world was full of miracles and surprising rules. It could be detected if you looked hard and experimented. An experimentation was their thing. Anyway, I was talking to Mr. Holmes about his book. Could you move a little to the left?

Why he wrote it and how it all came to being. Can I move that just a bit full? And I began the conversation by mentioning somebody's name. It's Everest Galois. Everist Galois. So, like, what happened to you? Okay. This is a great story.

It's to do with how I fell into writing science after literature. There are various reasons for this. I had what I call a lost scientific childhood, which we won't go into now. But, in fact, as a kid, I was fascinated by science. And because of the way literature, the education is sort of streamed. I was taken away from that. As a kid, I could build radios. I could strip a motorcycle engine.

I flew model airplanes. So you were one of those? I was one of those. And I had a wonderful uncle in the Royal Air Force who taught me a lot about flight. And actually, I can now say it, once smuggle me in to a V bomber, an atomic bomber. I have to say, it was, we didn't take off. You know where there were bombs? It was not loaded.

Oh, good. It was one of those big V-bombers that could carry... He smuggled you in a nice way as a tourist, or he thought maybe was going to drop you out of something? No, he saw it. He saw it. He was the kid. Let's educate him. So he took me in.

He showed me how it worked, sat me in the co-pilot seat. We were still on the ground. We was not armed. And then he smuggled me out again. I've never forgotten it. How are you to do? Under a coat? No, he just, it was on the parkway.

It was his plane. It had his name on it. He was the pilot. Okay. And he said, I don't know. what he said to the engineer, I would just, I take my nephew in, you know. So I had that lost scientific challenge,

which all began to come back when I started work on the romantic scientists. I also had this amazing break, and we're getting to Everest Galois now. I was given what they call a visiting fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. That's Cambridge, England. This is Newton's College, also Byron's College. It's famous

for its scientists, among other things, astrophysics, particularly, and mathematics. And one You're invited as a writer about poets. You've been now writing biographies and books about poets. That's right. And I was meant to be doing researching on biography, the history of literary biography. And what actually happened was I found these wonderful scientific archetypes, particularly the letters of Herschel that kept there in Cambridge.

And I started reading those. He's talking about William and Carolyn Herschel. This is a brother and sister team that did, built big telescopes and made all kinds of fascinating discoveries about stuff. and planets in those days. And gradually, I was drawn. I thought this is absolutely wonderful. And all this lost side of me started floating back. Plus, at Trinity, there's this tradition.

They talk about the high table. It's actually very democratic. You go in every evening to have a very rapid dinner, but you sit next to whoever happens to be there. There's no system of seating. So this is you and all the other teachers? This is, no, this is all the senior research faculty and so on, okay. So these are people of, these are weaky people.

There were seven Nobel Prize winners, okay. And I sat next to each of them at various points, all right. And this is one of these long tables with every plate is set perfectly, and every knife is perfectly anchored. That's exactly right. So it's very formal. Very formal, silverware, jugs of water and so on. And you talk basically the person on your left or you're right. And you have to talk fast because they don't, You imagine, you know, these don't sit around, boozing.

They don't. The thing I've really noticed, the meal would probably be over in about 25 minutes. Amazing, okay? And you talked. And once you got talking, I often never had time to finish my meal because it was, I would sit next to. I'd be next to an astrophysitist. And the famous thing I, which for me, you were something for you at this point. Like you were just laughing enough?

It was, yes. I mean, I was absolutely riveted. And I found things like scientists love to discuss their science. they're very often very good at describing it, which I loved compared with some of the literary dons, you know, guard and you're going into literary theory, and these guys want you to understand, and I love that.

On this particular occasion, I sat down to, next to a man who became clear, A, that he was Russian, and he spoke no English at all, and B, that he was a mathematician. About which you know. About which I knew very little. I was trying to learn a bit,

to catch up with the Herschels. Very, very little. So, and I thought, I cannot let this pass. There's no possibility of communication, but come on. You don't have the math in common or the language. Yes, okay. So I think about this for a moment. And in studying, beginning to study this period,

I have indeed been looking at the mathematicians of this period, and the French mathematicians of this period are where the cutting edge is. And there's one particular. You're studying, what, the 1790s? Yes. Exactly, particularly during the French Revolution, all right. And there's a young mathematician

whose name was Everest Gallois. Everist Galois itself is music to my ears. And he lived his life was as short as a romantic poet. He, from at school, he was at the Lise de Légrins, I think,

got thrown out of almost every institution he was in, but he had a natural gift for mathematics, theoretical mathematics. And he, He also was politically rather radical. And to cut this story short, I forget the exact date, but maybe around about 1820, something like that, he was writing on the theory of mathematics, number theory, in a more advanced way than anybody could understand.

He sent in papers to the academy. He was at the age of 1920. Yes, 1920, 2021, he was. And then he was developing a theory which will come to, which he got involved in, we're not quite sure if it was a political thing, but it involved a duel. He was challenged to a duel, and we think it was over a young woman, as so many jewels are, if you're 18, 19 or 20. And he is summoned out to have this duel in the Bois de Boulogne. And the night before this duel, he sits down and he writes a mathematical paper.

He puts in everything he knows into this single paper. And it's very moving. I've seen the manuscript. I have some grasp of what's going on, but it's also that there are lines of poetry in it. There are lines which are clearly about this girl. We don't know quite what we don't know what her name was. And the repeated thing is, I have no time.

I have no time. There is no time. So he's cramming this all in until dawn. I mean, it's unbelievable situation, this paper. And the math is in there too. And the mast is in there too. Okay. And he completes this theory, and we'll come to this in a moment.

And then he goes out and he shot and he dies. And this paper is left on his desk. And his great friend saves it. And it's published about, I think about 20 years later. The math bits or? The maths. Not the love stuff. Not the love stuff.

And it's the beginning of a stage mathematical theory, which is called group theory. Group theory, all right? Now this much I knew. and very, very broadly, here's my analogy to what group theory is, very, very dangerous this. It's to do with certain kinds of equation, all right? That, you know, those things with an equal sign and A, B, and it involves what they call cubics, so when something, as it, X to the power of three, it's a particular form of

equation, which will, you cannot work it, it will not produce the result. It will when it's square, but not when it's cubed, or when it's, what would it, called four times and so on. So it's a temperamental equation. It's a temperamental equation and no mathematician had found a way of solving it at the higher power. All right? So the analogy is it's like a box which when it reaches a certain size, you can't open it anymore. Okay.

Now group theory will be, this is my version of it, which I'd vaguely come to understand. It's like you can't open that box. So what you do is you put that box inside a bigger box. and you can open the bigger box and that somehow lets you into the little one okay I can't take you further I don't need to go any through so back to the Russian mathematician

so I turned to him as it were with the soup thing still in my hand and I said Everest Galois I mean you just needed to start the conversation that's right that's the only thing I could think of doing you just blurted out the name of a 19 year old ancient French mathematician

yeah not so ancient romantic French mathematician I looked him dead between the eyes. I said, Everest Galois. And there was a pause. And it's up to this day, this wonderful thing. He looked at me and this sort of seraphic grin, posits face. And then he did this gesture, which you cannot see being radio,

which is so visual. But what it is, his right hand went over his heart, as if he was saluting the flag, all right? And then both hands went outwards in a big embracing gesture. And what he was saying to me, to start it, was, every Scalois, so dear to my heart, to any mathematician, all right?

And then the big gesture meant he invented group theory, okay? And then he looked at me and then this smile got bigger and then he leaned across the table and he pulled in all the crockery, the silver water jug, the knife, the fork, the plates.

And he showed me group theory of what I tried to explain to you, the little box inside the big box in terms of the knife, forks, spoons, plates, salt sellers. No words. No words. There was no word.

I knew he was talking about group theory, and that's how he explained it to me. So if I hear the sound first of a hand going, and then I hear the clanking of silverware. Well, there's this wonderful gesture, which goes right out. And the broad gesture. And in a wonderful way, and it's very Trinity this, none of the other dons turn a hair. The matter of the direction. He's dragging all the crockery over and things in, oh, yes, yes, of course.

You know, what else would we expect? And there he is explaining to me, and giving this model that I've tried to explain on air as the little box you can't open and you put it in a bigger box. But this conversation was 10 minutes long? Okay, well, it couldn't be more than 25 because the dinner's never lasted more. I think that was one of the days.

I don't think I ate anything from the thing. I think I had a glass of water. Maybe I had a glass of wine, probably to keep myself going. But that whole conversation took place wordlessly. Yes. And I say that for sort of the period of time,

that 20 minutes, understood group theory because he somehow the way he did it, I thought, oh yes, okay, it's that, it's that, it's that. And to me, it was kind of, it was a one, it was a sort of revelation moment, really. And I thought, I love you science people, that you won't, nothing will stop you. You are jolly well going to explain this. And also I thought, you know, here I am sitting at one of the great universities with this chance to learn, okay, and learn a new field. And so this guy, wonderful Rush Master 15. He's done this to me. I am now going to. I will work at this and try and produce. I know this is a big leap, but it was in my mind. I will try and write a book that will somehow do the same thing.

I don't know how the hell I'm going to do this at this time. Okay. I don't know enough science. But I'll work at it. And that's how he got to write The Age of Wonder, which was the best book of the year from the National Academies of Science and Engineering and whatever the other one is. And it's such a, oh, man. I mean, it's kind of an adventure story. It's an adventure. It's great. Anyway, so that's Richard Holmes.

And I guess that's the podcast. It is. I'm Chad Ibumrod. And I'm Robert Krollwood. Thanks for listening. Radio Lab. My name is Melanie McCarty. I'm from Washington, D.C.

I listen to Radio Lab. Here is the thing you sent me. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Okay, I guess that's it. Thanks, guys.