Dr. Howard Georgi [harvard physics professor]

By: Julian Chavez | August 21, 2009 | Ten by Ten

Dr. Howard Georgi is a Harvard College professor and Mallinckrodt professor of physics at Harvard University. He is also Master of Harvard’s Leverett House. He has received numerous medals for his work, is active in physics education and in the status of women and minorities in physics. Georgi is currently working on an amusing, crazy idea that he calls “unparticle physics.”

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned?
That each individual is different and very different from me, and therefore it is worth making a real effort to listen to people one at a time. Because of my work in theoretical particle physics, I’ve been lucky enough to get peeks into some of the really great minds of the last 50 years. I’ve seen how differently these incredible minds work. This has convinced me that intelligence is a complicated thing that cannot be measured by any small set of numbers. And interesting problems require as many different kinds of intelligence as we can muster. This is one reason I have been so active in encouraging women in physics.

What book have you read that made a powerful impression on you?
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. This is probably not as well known as it should be because it is classified as science fiction, but that is not an adequate description. I highly recommend it.

Describe your average Sunday morning.
In the summer, I try to spend it on the tennis court. But from September to June, I spend it practicing my music (usually a midi file) and then singing in my church choir.

What individual was most influential during your formative years and how?
Probably my mom. She was convinced that I would be a genius and worked hard to make it happen – and that makes it easier to concentrate on intellectual activities. Not that she could understand anything that I have done, mind you, but she was very proud that I did it.

What is your take on the current economic crisis?
I’m not an expert. Economics is much more complicated than physics. I’m an optimist, so I still cling to the hope that the damage is not permanent.

What are your thoughts on the overall importance of art in modern society?
That is a tough one, because both “importance” and “art” are difficult to define precisely in this context. For me personally, music is very interesting, particularly classical music or something similarly very structured because there are echoes of the kind of structures I feel in my work, and which are likewise difficult to define precisely. Society, like economics, is too complicated for me. But I can no more imagine a world without art than a world without sports. They are both somehow built into the human condition by evolution.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to follow your career path?
What I tell my students is that the most important thing is that they enjoy the hour-to-hour, day-to-day manipulations that they do. You may get lucky and make some great discoveries, but most of the time you will be going up blind alleys. And if you don’t enjoy that, you are not going to be very happy. In my case, the day-to-day stuff is working hard with fun mathematics and trying to connect it to the physical world, but I suspect that the issues are similar in any interesting field. There is hard, ordinary stuff that you have to do, and if you don’t enjoy it enough to do it often and well, you won’t make breakthroughs. Of course, it also helps to be in the right place at the right time.

How do you decompress after a hard day’s work?
I don’t! I love all the different things that I do and wish I could spend more time on all of them. Tennis and singing are recreations that perhaps don’t happen often enough because I love them, too, but the work is great all by itself.

Describe your most vivid dream (or recurring dream).
I actually don’t remember my dreams. I don’t sleep a lot, and I wake up very quickly and get back to work, or at least get back to doing something.

How do you define success?
I think that I have done that already in the last few questions. I am blessed to be able to do work that I love that is unambiguously good. I get to interact with and teach wonderful bright people. For me, that is success. Of course, it is crucial that the love of my life puts up with my workaholic tendencies.

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