For the years between 1993 and 2005 I attended eight high level scientific conferences

1.      Cornelius Lanczos International Centenary Conference; Dec 12-17 1993; North Carolina State University, Raleigh N.C.

2.      Mathematics from Physics: Recent Trends and New Developments; May 19-22,1999; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL

3.      String Theory at the Millennium; Jan 12-15, 2000.; California Institute of Technology, CA.

4.      2001 A Space-time Odyssey; May21-25 2001;University of Michigan; Ann Arbor;. MI.

5.      Strings 2002 Cambridge; July15-20 2002. England

6.      Dirac Centennial Symposium; Dec.6-7 2002; Florida State University, Tallahassee FL.

7.      Cosmology-Particles-Strings; Prospects in Theoretical Physics; June 30-July11, 2003. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton N.J.

8.      Strings 2005 Toronto. July 11-16 2005.University of Toronto.

LANCZOS CONFERENCE: Cornelius Lanczos (1893-1974) was a physicist and mathematician who had a profound impact on the foundations of twentieth century science.   His papers cover a vast array of disciplines, including general relativity, quantum mechanics, scientific computation, applied mathematics and numerical analysis. Since Lanczos wore two hats, one of the mathematician, the other of the physicist, the conference had about half the talks on math and the other half on physics. The plenary talks on math were usually of no interest to the physicists and vice versa. One of the more tractable talks for me was that by John Stachel, an American physicist and philosopher of science. In 1977, Stachel became the first editor of the Einstein Papers Project. He told of an UNHAPPY COLLABORATION:

EINSTEIN and LANCZOS

L was interested in the equations of motion of General Relativity.

L’s …”reason for possible early disillusionment”

L would go to E once a week; E would give him a problem to work on during the week.

“Well, on the first occasion… E put before L a new type of wave equation or field equation and asked L to see if he could find a solution which would have certain properties… L understood the problem perfectly, was intensely proud of being given such a task by Einstein, and went away feeling very humble and unsure. But he studied the equation and after three or four days—flash!-there came into his mind the perfect solution. It had all the three properties that E had asked for. Now, to L this was really something very extraordinary, because he was a very humble, religious type of personality and he felt that this inspiration had come from the heavens to him; [ c. f  Ramanujan and the goddess Namagiri of Namakkal].  And that he should be able to bring to E in his first week in Berlin such a success moved him deeply. But he felt very humble about it, and when he reached E… he said, ”Yes, I have been able to find a solution.” He showed it to E and demonstrated that it had the required three properties. E looked at him and said, “Yes, very interesting, quite remarkable.” There was a short silence, and then he exclaimed, rather impatiently, “But don’t you see I gave you the wrong equation. It was quite wrong!” There was a silence. These two highly intelligent and sensitive men did not need to say anything, for they knew what a terrible thing had happened.

What actually followed was that Albert went and fetched his violin, Cornelius  went to the piano, and they played Bach for the rest of the hour. This story I have heard from L within a week or two of it having happened” Lancelot L. Whyte.

Caveat: The description of certain concepts that follow are at best intuitive, restricted, and probably half-baked. Einstein once said that we can simplify a concept up to a point and then it can’t be made simpler. So take the following “cum grano salis.”

Mathematics from Physics: Recent Trends and New Developments

There were four lecturers who delivered three lectures each.

1. Dan Freed: Dept. of Mathematics University of Texas at Austin. "Anomalies and Index Theory"
2. Cumrun Vafa: Dept of Physics. Harvard University. "D-Branes and Geometry"
3. Duong Phong: Dept of Mathematics. Columbia University. "Supersymmetric gauge theories and integrable models"
4. David Thouless: Dept of Physics. University of Washington. "topological quantum numbers and physical measurement"

Anomalies are mathematical defects in a quantum theory that make the theory "sick"; many times they can be cancelled. It turns out that anomalies can be cancelled in a supersymmetric theory if the dimension of the space is 10. The Atiyah-Singer Index theorem from topology is the main tool for understanding such anomaly terms.

There is an 11 dimensional M theory where there are exotic objects like 5 branes and super-membranes. When compactified to 10 dimensions the theory gives all five major string theories. Some of these are "D-brane " states in the 10 dimensional theory. Vafa discussed the geometry of these "D-branes".

A gauge theory treats forces in a geometrical way using global and local symmetries (mathematical groups). A supersymmetric gauge theory is a very large symmetry (one theory uses the rotation group SO(32), the 32 dimensional rotation group).

Thouless discussed topological quantum numbers (invariants) that arise from some very precise physical measurements.

Except for the last lecturer it was almost impossible to tell who were the physicists and who were the mathematicians.

This conference was very inspiring. It was a privilege to observe these people at "the cutting edge" of research. Discussions on Math and Physics carried over after the lectures, at lunch and dinner, and even at the banquet over glasses of wine.

I would like to thank the TNCC Foundation for partially supporting my attendance at the conference.

STRING THEORY AT THE MILLENIUM: All the big shots were there:

“This conference is not intended to be for the general public. For this reason we would like to discourage people who are not theoretical physicists from registering for this conference.”

Well they accepted a physics dilettante from Thomas Nelson Community College!

Since I can spend the rest of my life studying these talks,,and maybe still understand only 50%, I’ll just relate a few highlights.

Lecture 1: Witten;  “Quantum Self Duality of R-R fields” I didn’t understand much not really knowing what a Raimond-Raimond field was.

During the break I saw Stephen Hawking being attended by his nurse. I talked to an anthropology major whose boyfriend was a math major. So I wasn’t the only “low-brow” there.

Lecture 2: Banks; “Supersymmetry and Spacetime “what should you really be working on if the world was coming to an end.” A¹/₂BPS idea!! (i.e.  A half baked possibly silly idea). Seriously: two guiding ideas: Geometry encoded in Quantum Hilbert Space or Local Supersymmetry in gauge principle which encodes freedom to change the holographic screen. (??) Holography is not compatible with local field theory. We need to build up a whole collection of Hilbert Spaces ‘talking’ to each other. Basically he’s talking about a connection between Supersymmetry (SUSY) and holography. I had lunch with K.M.M. I met a musician who showed me some of his beautiful sketches. He wanted to “explain” all this stuff in a more concrete manner. After the first day I never saw him again.  Went to the bookstore, “need to spend more time there.”

Lecture 3: Sen talked about NonSUSY Brane configurations and gave an example: Classical solutions (realized as solitons) D8 Branes-kinks; D7 Branes; vortices; D6 Branes- monopoles. So: topology comes into the picture!.

Lecture 4: Polchinski; “Certain space-time singularities are cured by string theory”. String Theory cannot cure all singularities.

Thursday: Jan13;

Lecture5: Strominger talked about the Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes. I need to go back and read Hawking’s paper describing how black holes, when considered as quantum objects can radiate.

Lecture 6: Randall: Lessons from Extra Dimensions: Perhaps additional dimensions of String Theory are not eliminated by compactification; perhaps it is acceptable for moduli to approach infinity; the apparent string scale can be as low as a TeV. Randall-Sundrum stuff. I met Lisa in Cambridge; will describe that later.

Lecture 7: Green; String Scattering in the Bulk and on the Brane;. I think this is the first time I heard of the “Bulk” Lisa talks about it all the time. We live on a Brane, all of the interactions occur on the Brane, only gravity extends outside the Brane, into the Bulk.

Lecture 8: Vafa talked about his favorite subject, ”Mirror Symmetry” He reviewed mirror symmetry, for every Calabi-Yau there is a Calabi-Yau. He discussed “geometric engineering” of quantum field theories, ending the talk with a sequence of delPezzo geometries (?). (I need to look that one up)

Lecture9: Seiberg; The Infra-Red-Ultra Violet Correspondence. Non commutative field theory leads to UV-IR connection. The serious divergences occur in the UV (or is it the IR??)

Lecture 10: Ooguri; Long Strings in ADS3, short strings in CY3. “concept of space-time geometry to be modified in String Theory; Evidence for demise of Space-time, only time remains…if spacetime is doomed, time is doomed” ADS3 is 3 dimensional Anti-de Sitter Space; CY3 is a 3 dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold.

Lecture 11: Robbert Dijkgraaf; Discrete fluxes in String theory. There’s a higher rank historian on an island Pangea where time runs backwards; there’s exotic and sporadic islands and the “Starfish of Joe” (Polchinski I assume). I lost Robbert when he went off into a corner of a moduli space. (Actually there is a very nice lecture on the NET by Dijkgraaf: KITP On-Line Conferences; there are some nice popular lectures (not only on String Theory; but most are technical)). Bott periodicity was mentioned; topology.

Lecture 12: Maldacena; Some Topics in the ADS/CFT Correspondence. Maldacena’s discovery, or invention? ADS; Anti-de Sitter space, basically gravity. CFT, conformal field theory, basically gauge theory.

At breakfast two gentlemen (Bernstein and Cordova) explained a dilemma I had. And this is back to the ABC’s;

BC,” An elementary particle is an irreducible representation of the Poincare Group” To my mind this is one of the basic connections between reality (described by physics), an elementary particle, and pure mathematics  (abstract group theory) of course using the example of the group of Special Relativity.

Me: “How can a particle-represented as a vector be an irreducible representation when a representation is a matrix?’

BC, “It’s the irreducible representations that act upon the state that represents the_____”. It’s hard to take notes, especially during a casual discussion.

Discussion (B). duality. Magnetic monopoles interchanged in the duality so that the electrons are hard to see.”

Saturday, Jan 15.

Lecture 13: John Schwarz; (one of the founders of String Theory) Looking through my notes this appears to be one of the most tractable lectures. He started with a brief chronology of developments: 1968-70 hadron physics;71-73 SUSY;74 interpretation of a unified theory of gravity;76-78 SUGRA (Supergravity);77-83 Superstrings;84: 1^st Superstring Revolution CYs, SO(32), E8XE8. The last two are mathematical groups. I can’t recall if it was at this conference but I’ll relate the story anyway. I asked Ed Witten, arguably the smartest man in the world, during a break, “Professor, What is E8XE8?” He responded that it was the double cover of something, something…I asked him what was the double cover. He turned 180⁰ and walked away from me. This corroborated my suspicions that I was someplace where I didn’t belong.

Again, was it at this conference? At the end of the day I found myself walking with John Schwarz back to the hotel. Professor, I asked, “What math do I need to know to understand String Theory? His succinct reply, “ALL MATH!!”

I was fortunate to obtain the signatures of Greene, Schwarz and Witten on my copy of their classic two volume exposition of String Theory! I guess I’m a Rudiger. (ref; Mark Knopfler’s song)

It’s been nine years since the conference and I looked at my notebook maybe four or five times. After 10 months I expanded the notes of the Lectures by Schwarz, Randall, Witten and Hawking. So I’ll postpone any further discussion of Schwarz’ talk.

Lecture 14: Leonhard Susskind; ”The Holographic Principle and its limitations” In a nutshell the holographic principle states that we can know all of physics in the interior of a manifold just by knowing the physics on the boundary.

Lecture 15: Polyakov; Gauge Fields, Strings and the Fifth Dimension; 5^th dimension is important; in Kaluza Klein Theory the 5^th dimension takes care of the electromagnetic force. Also we see dim 5 in the Maldacena ADS5/CFT correspondence. Here Polyakov considers a very special 5 dimensional metric where only massless modes survive on the boundary and these modes correspond to gauge fields.

Lecture 16: Stephen Hawking; No Boundaries to the Brane; I should’ve taken more notes of a humanistic nature. I think this was the talk where you had to have a ticket to get in. It was a thrilling experience to see Hawking wheeled out onto the stage. At the end of the talk only one question was allowed. It seemed like an incredible amount of time for him to enter his answer on the computer. The answer itself was two short sentences. The Brane-New world has a no boundary condition; the Universe did start at a fixed space-time point, but not a big-bang singularity but an ordinary starting point (c.f. N pole of Earth). A law of physics can be given mathematically in the interior of a region of, say, space, by a (system of) differential equation(s). The boundary condition(s) give values of the variables on the boundary of the region.

Lecture 17: Singer; “Math/Physics, Then and Now, Now and Then” I waited for this one also; the mathematician has his chance to speak. [he was “impressed” to get Feynman to use math words like homology]. His talk was about the interface between math and string theory. Mathematicians want an exact answer, physicists are happy with an ‘astute’ approximation. Mirror Symmetry of physics is related to Enumerative Geometry of mathematics. The classic example is the Seiberg -Witten Equations of 2 dimensional SUSY Yang Mills theory (physics) to prove certain topological invariants (pure mathematics). These are the reasons I still want to pursue these studies after I retire. Index theory is related to anomalies. “There is a universal quadratic form in homotopy theory that yields a universal geometric quadratic form… that might be used in M Theory study of branes.” He asked the question, “Why String Theory?” aside from the physics, “What are you probing mathematically?” He finished off by quoting Feynman again, “Any math I need I can develop.”

I went to lunch with people and arrived back very late and only got the tail end of the following lecture.

Lecture 18: Gross; “Some Possible Conceptual Revolutions of the 21^st Century”(revisited 9 years later on the “String Theory at the Millenium” site. And it was probably the most elementary and therefore tractable of all the talks.) 1) There are fundamental laws in mathematical form which are universally applicable. 2) There is a direction where these laws converge to a common source. 3) All observable phenomena can be explained by these laws. He then gave a nice Reductionist chart illustrating A TOE (theory of everything) String theory (?) and how it branches off to sub-disciplines. But the nature of Space-Time (ST) is doomed. “S and T may be doomed” Witten; “It is almost certain that S and T are illusions” Seiberg. Why?? In String Theory we can smoothly change the number of spatial dimensions, thus tear the fabric of space. In String  Theory we cannot probe to arbitrary small distances. (Two Uncertainty Principles come into play here, that of Heisenberg and that of strings.)

Sidebar Advice: If you are really into some lecture or event, don’t go off before hand with other people. You might miss something that would be irretrievable. I once went to a two part lecture on the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem with a colleague. During the break my colleague wanted to leave. I thought I was understanding most of the talk. But he had the wheels.

Lecture 19: Shenker; “What are Strings Made Of” Well if they are the ultimate constituents of matter they cannot be made up of anything. They are truly “elementary”. An electron is considered an elementary particle because, as far as we know, it cannot be “broken up” into constituents. Quarks were considered elementary, but now everything is made up of strings. But now… [we] no longer believe that strings are fundamental; decisive evidence… String Duality. What are strings made up of? D Branes. (?)

Lecture 20: t’Hooft; “Quantum Mechanics with Strings attached” Paradox; if all the degrees of freedom of some section of the Universe lie on its boundary, how can we reconcile this with locality? Therefore the Paradox of Unitarity-Locality. Conjecture(?). No theory can reconcile these conflicting requirements unless quantum states are not

Considered to be the most fundamental degrees of freedom.

2001 A SPACETIME ODYSSEY

About a week before the conference I decided to get some essential background. I should’ve started a year before after the Millenium one. Sat, May 19 2001, plenty of time at airport. Checked into Michigan League by 12:30. Went to the science library, looked at stuff on fiber bundles. Left 5:30PM. At Starbucks read “Differential Geometry, Fiber Bundles and Physical Theories” by Isidore Singer, a great paper! Chen Yang said, “I found it amazing that gauge fields are exactly connections on fiber bundles which the mathematicians developed without reference to the physical world.” After Starbucks went to Borders and bought Naber’s excellent “Topology, Geometry and Gauge Fields” Sunday I spent three hours in the math section of a used book store. These university towns are great. A  Mystery. I acquired 15 volumes and can’t remember how I got them home.  Starbuck’s Sunday evening, I saw John Schwarz. Told him about Naber’s book. He said that it was similar to his course on mathematical physics. Then went to the reception, had some hors d’oevres, got the badge and met the secretary, (she was  young and pretty). I went to dinner with David Hibler who is the husband of my colleague Cathy and who teaches physics and computer science at CNU.

HIGHLIGHTS and OBSERVATIONS:

1.      Peter Higgs: "My Life as a Boson; the Story of the Higgs"

Very nice historical overview of particle physics particularly stressing spontaneous symmetry breaking, relationship to superfluidity and superconductivity, Goldstone’s Thm (as a No-Go Thm proved by Axiomatic Field Theorists using C* Algebra). Higg’s evasion of Goldstone Thm.

2.      Joseph Silk: "The Dark Side of the Universe"

99% of the Matter in the Universe is "Dark Matter"; 10% of that is baryonic, the rest non baryonic. What is it? Possibilities listed. Astronomer’s discussion of MACHOS, WIMPS, Supernovae, Microwave Background, etc. Amanda and Boomerang experiments.

3.      Robert Kirshner: "Evidence of Cosmic Acceleration from Supernovae" Supernovae observations give various values of cosmological parameters, e.g  =1.000. (density parameter);1/Ho=14.1±1.6Gy. Easy to understand phenomenological lecture.

4.      Lev Okun: "Vacuum as seen from Moscow" Miscellaneous topics (see first slide) as studied by Russian physicists. I was particularly interested in 5.the "Mirror World" of Alice. Is this the same as "Mirror Symmetry? Also 11. magnetic monopoles and cosmic strings. " a particle- circled around "Alice string" transforms to a mirror particle and is invisible for the terrestrial observer"…"instantons-similar solution to monopole in Euclidean space, not Minkowski space" .

5.      Jim Hartle:"Spacetime Quantum Mechanics" Review of history of Spacetime; review of Feynman Path Integrals, 2 slit experiment etc. Leads to: sum over histories QM. May apply more generally when spacetime is not fixed. questions of Quantum Gravity. A very nice lecture.

6.      John Bahcall: "Solar Neutrinos" Discusses solar neutrino problem and various experiments (e.g. Kamiokande) designed to pick up these "elusive little ones". new experiments, new physics? Very phenomenological!

7.      Mary K. Gaillard: "Progress in Weakly Coupled String Phenomenology" After a brief overview of string theory and the M Theory "puddle diagram", Mary K. outlined various ways to "compactify" to lower dimensions (I think?). the rest is pretty involved.

8.      Alexander Polyakov: "Gauge Invariant Words and 5^th dimension" From my notes; "…talk-quite inhomogeneous. Then talk will run wild…mmmmm." Yes. words not worlds! Gauge fields may have same underlying mechanism as strings, but Gauge fields can be reduced to an alphabet which form words.??? mmmm…After the lecture the mathematician Singer asked some incisive questions.

9.      John Schwarz: "Anomaly Cancellation" Discussion of anomalies, chiral fields in string theory. "to analyze anomalies it is useful to use the language of differential forms and characteristic classes". G2n (ugly) vs I2n+2 (beautiful) anomalies. I need to learn forms and Chern class stuff! Anomalies in Type 1 and 2B String Theories. outline of Schwarz, Witten paper.

10.  Jacob Beckenstein: "Case for discrete energy levels of a black hole" Review of black-holes, Hawking’s (1970) Thm. development of a "Black-Hole Algebra"!! I liked this lecture very much.

11.  Shing Tung Yau: "Geometry and Spacetime" Quick review of Riemannian geometry, then went "into the clouds",e.g."Calabi-Yau manifolds with SU(3) holonomy used as a model for vacuum solution for string theory for R3,1 x M6 compactification; SU(4) holonomy is used in F theory of Vafa; G2 holonomy in M Theory. (We really need to study topology!) a very difficult lecture.

12.  Paul Steinhardt: "Colliding Branes and the origin of the hot big bang" The Ekpyrotic Universe. hep-th 0103239; hep-th 0105199; hep-th 0105212. the Big Bang was a result of two colliding branes!!

13.  Arthur Jaffe: "Twists and Supersymmetry" Quick review of quantum theory

geometric invariants, index, cohomology, non commutative geometry.

14.  Helen Quinn: "The symmetry or lack of it between matter and antimatter" Brief history of antimatter idea. Standard model phenomenology. Nothing new.

15.  Stanley Deser:Gravity’s Century 1901-2001 Very nice history of gravity from Einstein to string theory.

16.  Isidore Singer: "Geometry in Physics Tomorrow" stories; e.g Steenrod took one semester to prove Stoke’s Thm. The royal road to geometry: C* Algebra.

17.  Alan Guth: "Eternal Inflation: Successes and Questions" Inflationary scenarios; evidence. Boomerang results astro-ph/0005004;astro-ph/0104460. DASI astro-ph/0104490. eternal inflation, eternal chaotic inflation, implications.

18.  Bruno Zumino: "Non Abelian gauge theories and non commutative spaces" Seiberg-Witten String Theory and Non Commutative Geometry. gauge theory on torus, non trivial bundles with non commutative coordinates. examples.

19.  Paul Frampton:"Spontaneous CP Violation" blackboard lecture. (Substitute for Michael Green.) Hep-ph/0103022 Standard Model phenomenology, but new particles needed, duarks (not diquarks).

20.  Wendy Freedman: "Cosmological Parameters" Introduced a new parameter, EBL (Extra-galactic background light). The latest results for the cosmological parameters…

Ho=72±8,  o=1.03±.06,  m=.3±.1, to=13±2Gy etc…

21.  Andrei Linde: "Inflation and String Cosmology" Eternal Inflation; " a very cheap way of producing not only our universe, but others". Debunks Ekpyrotic scenario. See hep-th/0103239. Horava Witten Theory. various brane scenarios. "2-braner" start with 2 inhomogeneous branes. start with one brane "Randall-Sundrum II scenario.

22.  Michael Turner: "Cosmology 2001" A nice discussion of current cosmological ideas. Supernovae as standard candles, Boomerang and Desi experiments, cosmological parameters. conclusion:, "almost impossible not to predict a flat universe"!! top 10 challenges of inflation.

23.  Martinus Veltmann: "Why do we need a linear collider?" The questions; why 3 families of particles?, why observed masses?, why standard model?, why CP violation?, why smallness of cosmological constant? "Teeny" a recent Nobel Prize winner denounces supersymmetry and string theory. Listen to his response to my question at the end of the lecture. He wanted to take me out for a beer to further discuss the question!

24.  Sheldon Glashow (also a Nobel laureate) gave a talk at the banquet. He was also critical of string theory.

It was an honor and a privilege to be involved in such a high level scientific conference. Many of the talks presented much needed background and historical material which was ideal for me.

George DeRise, May 31 2001

A Wonderful Addition to my Library:

I had a copy of "The Very Early Universe" edited by Gibbon, Hawking and Siklos in my library. It had articles by Hartle, Guth, Linde and Steinhardt (besides having a Los Alamos National Laboratory stamp on the cover page). I got all 23 speakers at the Conference to sign it + Sheldon Glashow and Gordy Kane to boot!)

The Conference Proceedings are published by World Scientific 2001 A Spacetime Odyssey editors, Michael Duff, James Liu copyright 2002.

STRINGS 2002 CAMBRIDGE

50 Lectures!!! So I’ll just talk about my experience at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Jan 13, (Sat) My wife Kathy with my daughter, Danielle drove me to Dulles Airport. With four hours to kill I began reading Baez’ Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity. The flight was uneventful and I studied the whole night.

July 14, (Sun) At 7:00AM got on the bus at Heathrow to Cambridge. I was reading on the bus but felt ill. Arrived in Cambridge and then took a long walk to Trinity College. The room was austere, a bed, more like a cot, a desk, a chair and two small tables. No radio, no clock, no cup or glass. A Cambridge guard told me, “State of the art in Newton’s time” Stopped at two bookstores; I couldn’t look at books! Went to the evening reception for 15 minutes and left,  talking to no one. In the evening everything was closed except a bar.

July 15, (Mon.) Up at 6AM, breakfast at Starbuck’s. Jimmy Cliff raggé music was comforting. Then the long walk to the Cavendish laboratory where the talks were held. A beautiful morning! The conference had 440 participants. Shenker was an excellent speaker. After three talks, during the morning break, I bought some String Theory T shirts and looked at some books. I sat outside on the grass in the beautiful sunshine. I thought of Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I heard the Learned Astronomer” which I always detested. Now I thought, well sometimes at least he was right. Back to the talks: the fourth mentioning bouncing solutions and rolling tachyons, kinks in time and space-like branes, Dp branes and RR charges. Vafa was next. He always commands attention, I began to focus on how the presenters delivered their talks. Even if I understood little of what he was saying, Vafa dominated them all. At lunch went back to my room, wanted to buy milk, but ate my cereal dry (I brought about 10 bags of my homemade granola.) I didn’t attend the free lunch in order to avoid the crowd. Rushed back to the Cavendish, I noticed,” How beautiful the yellow violet and green weeds...Van Gogh once said,’ look at the place where they throw the garbage, my God it’s beautiful’…”Have the particle physicists really plumed the depths of nature… Arent’t their own abstractions so far away from nature?”  Maldacena found a class of backgrounds which are pp waves. The next talk was on the Geometry of SUSY  ppwaves; I recognized Lie Algebras and product groups, but even this was obscure. Then a talk on ppwave interactions from Yang-Mills. I guess Monday afternoon was pp time. The ninth talk broke the pp chain with brane-antibrane systems. During this and the tenth and last talk of the day I nodded off. 10 lectures from 9:00AM to 6:00PM. 40+5 more to go! Went to the reception and talked to a young Dutch, graduate student  studying under Dijkgraaf, Mine Temurhan., I found it more comfortable to talk to the grad students who still knew so much more than I. We talked for more than half an hour, outside by the river. Afterwards going back to my room I couldn’t find a single grocery store in Cambridge!

July 16, (Tues) Some general comments: As I thumb through my detailed notes of Tuesday’s lectures (and this applies to most of the talks at these conferences) I found that even concepts that I once studied and understood were mentioned en passant, and for the specialists were as clear as night and day, but for me they were at best nebulous. The second lecture of the day was on Moose or Quiver Theory. In this field new concepts are introduced, I believe, exponentially, so when I try to fill in the lacunae of the previous conferences (and I mean the basics), they always introduce a flood of new ideas. Now I have a greater understanding of my students’ plight! But I did recognize various metrics and wrote in Lecture 18, “actually thought I understood some of this…”   One thing was very clear, I needed to study lots of differential geometry and topology. Thus far I have seen hardly any classical math. While Schwarz was lecturing (15) Hawking was sitting by the open door with his secretary. During Lecture 18 “Hawking was wheeled in again, this time by a bleached blond.” While walking back to Trinity I talked to a young man from the University of Wales, Swansea. He landed a five year temporary teaching position but there’s the need to publish. I recall in Illinois a young woman, a post-doc, about 25 or 26 years of age, who had the double dilemma of trying to land a permanent position and start a family at the same time. That night I stayed in the room and wrote postcards to my family.

July 17, (Wed) morning at Starbuck’s; Jimmy Cliff, “You can get it if you really want…You’ll succeed at last.” Interesting how a song that you first heard thirty years ago parts still have the same meaning, other parts completely different.Every morning I see this gentleman, obviously associated with the conference, at a table intensively preparing a lecture. After the first three lectures we had a free afternoon or go to “History of Physics at the Cavendish” I opted for the former.

I went to Trinity Chapel to take photos of Newton’s statue. A small Japanese lady, Yoko, was taking photos; she asked me to take one of her and Newton. She reciprocated for me. I then told her some Newton stories (that I got from Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, how he took particular glee in breaking Leibnitz’ heart, how he had counterfeiters hung when he was Master of the Mint. She said, in a very thick accent, laughingly, but a bit upset how I broke her bubble of such a great man. I said that he was still a very great man-bowed and shook her hand. Yoko was very sweet and I felt bad afterward.

In the evening I sat by the river Cam, reading and watching the ducks in the water and people having a good time boating. “Monopole solutions in Yang-Mills Higgs theory are possible if, via the Higgs mechanism, the gauge group is broken to a subgroup with a direct U(1) factor- identified with U(1) E&M”. An attractive woman sits alone on the other side of the river; a boat goes by with four guys in it, one waves hello to her. Asymptotically project the Yang-Mills field tensor onto U(1)factor to get the Maxwell field tensor. The spatial part gives the magnetic field”Interesting! Met a lady attending the conference; she talked about her four year temporary position in Germany-if she doesn’t get tenure she’ll be out and would come to the U.S. In fact she did spend two years at MIT. I told her that I taught five classes and gave a total of 30 tests per semester and thus had no time to study.

July 18, (Thur) morning at Starbuck’s. I saw Lisa Randall working on her slides for her upcoming talk. I approached her and told her that I wanted to have her in my book. She looked perplexed. I had a whole set of questions for her, but the situation proved rather awkward. I shouldn’t have disturbed her work. Atiyah started for the morning, talking about twisted K theory. There’s actually an entire journal devoted to K Theory; I have no idea what it is about. Nor did I understand the next speaker who mentioned bubbles, a bouncing brane cosmology, an ADS throat with decreasing warp factor, a mirage cosmology. I missed the next five talks and decided to go to the Wren library. Among other things I saw Shakespeare’s first folio, letters by Lord Byron, Russell’s letter against the A Bomb, Newton’s own copy of the Principia dated 1687 with his corrections by hand, a beautiful thirteenth century Psalter, the Liber Cosmographie, a beautiful two volume Book of Hours from the early 15^th century turned to p.189 with a depiction of St. George slaying the dragon. On my way back to my room at Trinity above each arch- St. George slaying the dragon!! Before the last two talks I met Claus Montonen of Montonen-Olive Duality fame. He was very friendly signed a book “with friendship” and was very impressed that I have physics as a hobby! The duality states that in N=4 SUSY-YM theory it is physically equivalent if one replaces the gauge coupling g with1/g, interchanging electric charge particles with monopoles. This evening I also sat on a bench watching the boaters; it was much cooler.

July 19, (Fri) After Bank’s talk, Lisa gave her talk on the “Unification of Couplings in RS1 and Bulk Holography” In the Randall-Sundrum Model there is only one brane… the extra dimensions extend to infinity, but are curved like a saddle. This curvature prevents the gravitational field of matter on the brane from spreading far into the extra dimensions.” (Hawking; Universe in a Nutshell p.189). The third lecture of the morning was David Morrison, the mathematician that I saw every morning at Starbuck’s. He talked about K3 Surfaces. I missed the next five lectures and attended the last two. At the Friday night banquet John Schwarz told how it feels to be old (i.e.60). He told of his relations with Richard Feynman who was very skeptical of String Theory. On passing by he would yell, “Hey Schwarz, how many dimensions are you in today?” S said to F the F diagrams painted on your van are dangerous… some of them zooming round the streets of Pasadena.” Schwarz made the generalization, “Young physicists… new ideas.” (like he had inventing String Theory). “Older physicists…skeptical.” Pierre Raimond made the comment, “Adam and Eve, who is the boson, who is the fermion?” I sat with some grad students and after dinner approached Lisa, who was talking to a couple for about 10 minutes. I asked if I could have three or five minutes of her time. “I don’t think there is time tonight.” On the bus ride home I sat with Prem, born in Calcutta. We talked about the comparison between Ramanujan, Hawking and Witten. To him it was obvious R>>H,W.

July 20, (Sat) recorded in my notebook…“Happy Birthday Francesco Petrarcha” Saturday morning and there were still five more lectures! Dijkgraaf started it off with “Matrix Models, Topological Strings and Supersymmetric Gauge Theories” It is interesting how two talks can contain very esoteric, arcane and hence nebuluous ideas and yet one would stand out. “Excellent Talk-Excellent Slides” I’ll pass by the last four talks so we can get on to…

THE DIRAC CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION:

(from the conference)