Why I’m Hosting The Joy of x Podcast | Mathematics - Quanta Magazine

The noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University explains why he wanted to share intimate conversations with leading researchers from diverse fields in his new podcast. 

Photo: Ashley Mackenzie for Quanta Magazine

As a teenager in the 1970s, I used to love snuggling up in a big, soft velvet chair in my high school library. There, in its burnt-orange upholstery (I told you it was the ’70s), I’d lose myself in the memoirs of great scientists. One of those autobiographies, Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, made an abiding impression on me. In it, he describes feeling hopelessly stuck on a problem as a young postdoctoral fellow. To make matters worse, he was suffering from such a severe case of hay fever that he had to take two weeks off and escape to a remote, pollen-free island in the North Sea. One night, he suddenly saw the solution to his problem. He was far too giddy to sleep, so as a new day dawned, he climbed “a rock jutting out into the sea … and waited for the sun to rise.” His late-night epiphany is now called quantum mechanics.

This is the kind of fascinating thing we can learn by hearing great minds talk about their work and how it connects to their lives. It’s the best way, and maybe the only way, to learn not just what great scientists do but why they do it.

So when the editors at Quanta Magazine invited me to host a podcast for them, I jumped at the chance...

One last thing. Maybe you’re wondering why we call this podcast The Joy of x. Aside from the pun that only people of a certain age will get, we feel that this is a show about different kinds of joy — the joy of discovery, the joy of curiosity, and the joy of being a scientist, to name a few. As in algebra, the letter x represents the unknown quantity, the solution we’re seeking. But to us it connotes anything that sparks imagination and curiosity, anything that lies beyond the edge of what’s known. In short, x stands for the scientific quest.

 

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Source: Quanta Magazine