Archive for April, 2016
Blackett and Beckett lived here48 Paultons Square, Chelsea, London, was home to the experimental physicist Patrick Blackett and to the playwright Samuel Blackett, albeit at different times. Recently, English Heritage agreed that their residency should be marked by blue plaques, and Graham was invited to speak at the unveiling on the life of Blackett, though he also could not resist praising the achievement of Beckett, one of his favourite playwrights.
Astronomer Sir Arnold Wolfendale and actress Penelope Wilton unveil the Blackett and Beckett blue plaques
Masters of Edinburgh
As part of his research for his next book, Graham spent last Friday in Edinburgh talking with the Fields-Medal winning mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah and the Nobel-winning physicist Sir Peter Higgs.
At the Perimeter
p>Graham spent the past week at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, as a guest of its Director Neil Turok, talking with several of its leading theoreticians. This was part of Graham’s research for his forthcoming book on the relationship between mathematics and fundamental physics, which Einstein called ‘miraculous’. For Paul Dirac, theoreticians who work on fundamental physics should regard mathematical beauty as their lodestar.
