Democritus: Thanks to Euroscience and ESOF 2006 we had the opportunity to eat Bavarian pretzels in the Science Biergarten of Deutschen Museum in Munich and even to talk with Prof. Robbert Dijkgraaf after his remarkable
Plenary Lecture: Strings, black holes and the end of space and time.

If your time schedule allows it, you can download and listen to the complete MP3 file (15 MB 16:40 min) of the conversation.

Who is
Robbert Dijkgraaf is since 2005 Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Amsterdam. In 2003 he received the Spinoza Award for his research on string theory – the highest honour for scientific work in The Netherlands. Professor Dijkgraaf, who also studied painting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie is firmly engaged in enhancing the public awareness of mathematics and science, and bridging the gap with the arts and humanities... more

If you conceive yourself as a real science communication fan, you can find some Xtracts below.

If you prefer pure science only than skip to the string theory’s part

• What I noticed is that there is not a royal way to give a talk. Even in teaching when you see an audience which is very mixed you often think that people who are listening are little copies or clones of yourself. But it is not true. So when I give a talk and I put a lot of efforts sometimes somebody comes and says ‘I did not understand a word’. But it happens they even do not say that. People are hearing different things that you say and it is very unpredictable, it is a kind of black art. This is a lesson I got after listening and giving a lot of talks. 
  
  
• If you are a theoretical physicist you are always baffling many because the experimentalists, people of general public or people from outside physics never really understand what you are doing. If you are a biologist and you make experiments than everything is clear. The experimentalists could say ‘Oh, I have discovered this particle’. But when you are a mathematician you do something which by definition people do not understand and if they all understand you would not have a job. And you always have to lie…
  
  
• If you are talking with your friends or colleagues you are not talking with equations. When I am chatting with my friends I am not talking about equations. They are quite important but in the end. It is something that you should realize and it is important especially for young people. You have to go out; you have to explain your ideas. Some of my students really like this but other ones did not and some of them at some point stopped doing physics because they felt they are not recognized. So you also have to put efforts to make clear what your ideas are. 
  
  
• I think in Europe students are not often trained well enough to do that. When I first saw American students and they gave presentations I thought ‘Wow, these gays know a lot!’ Well, in the end they did not…It is a question of the way of communicating which is very different. The European style is usually very modest, very technical. It could work well with certain audience but it does not work always. That is way you could also try just to explain your results and I think this is a part of what is to be scientist. 
  
  
• The physicists have to be more creative in explaining their results. Because for instance when you are talking about terrible disease you can just show one picture and people do ‘Aughhhh…’ and thus they feel there is an importance. But when you are talking about an elementary particle a lot of people do not care about it. Of course they are made out of it but…
  
  
• Also what happen is that science is moving sometimes so far from everyday reality that it is like you have a very long bridge… I noticed that you have to take your results and bring them to the audience but it does not work like that. People do not share your background and to find the mixture is very difficult but it is important to practice it. For instance I write a newspaper column. Often I think ‘Oh, people will like this’ and afterwards they like things but which are very different than these I thought they would like… When for instance you want to explain new results than often people say ‘It is just too much’. Even when explaining what is the reason somebody got a Noble Prize and we say ‘They got it because they found new property of quarks’ and at the moment I say the word ‘quark’ the people are decoupled.  So you have to find the right metaphor which is also quite difficult to do.

Democritus: Now you can listen prof. Dijkgraaf’s answer to ‘more technical questions’ concerning the number of dimensions in string theory and why the knots made in 3 or 4 dimensions are more intriguing then the others.
In order to do so download and listen to the shortened MP3 file (8 MB 8:42 min)

Than you can find more about:

• Poincare’s conjecture, Platonic solids, the winners of Fields Medals and the quantum uncertainties…
  
  
• How physics is used to be solved fundamental problems of mathematics while there are mathematicians who even do not know that we have space-time in 4 dimensions…
  
  
• That something special is happening in dimension 4 where physics makes sense and the mathematics is most complicated…
  
  

More about ESOF?
The Euroscience Open Forum welcomed over 2100 participants from 58 countries in Munich! The torch was carried to Barcelona, which will host ESOF2008. ESOF2006 was initiated by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft...more

As the name indicates, Euroscience Open Forum was brought to life by Euroscience, a grass-roots scientific organisation founded in 1997 with over 2,000 members in 40 countries…more