Creative Lives and Works Dirac’s equation written by Neil Turok and Antony Hewish’s signature on the blackboard in Alan Macfarlane’s room, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Photograph courtesy Alan Macfarlane. Creative Lives and Works: Antony Hewish, Martin Rees and Neil Turok is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England’s leading social anthropologists and historians, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of 40 years, the three conversations in this volume, are part of a larger set of interviews that cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences, the sciences and to even the performing and visual arts. The current volume on three of England’s foremost astrophysicists-cosmologists is the fourth in the series of several such books. Antony Hewish, who won the Nobel Prize in 1974, in the foreword to Questions of Truth writes, ‘The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is non-intuitive for those unacquainted with physics.... But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense understanding’. Sir Martin Rees eloquently puts forward the problems and challenges of the 21st century, in relation to science, ethics and politics. Like Hewish and Rees, Neil Turok also piques the layman’s interest in the mysteries of the cosmic world. Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection takes one into the world of boundless discoveries hidden among the blue skies. The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in Astronomy and Cosmology as well as the History of Science, but also to those with an inquisitive mind. Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities where he received two Master’s degrees and two doctorates. He is the author of over forty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Professor Macfarlane received the Huxley Memorial Medal, the highest honour of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2012. Creative Lives and Works Antony Hewish, Martin Rees and Neil Turok In conversation with ALAN MACFARLANE Edited by Radha Béteille First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Social Science Press The right of Alan Macfarlane to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-76771-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-16847-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon Lt Std by Manmohan Kumar, New Delhi 110020 Contents Preface vii Transcriber’s Note xiii Introduction xv PART I Antony Hewish – In conversation with Alan Macfarlane 3 PART II Martin Rees – In conversation with Alan Macfarlane 47 PART III Neil Turok – In conversation with Alan Macfarlane 99 and Tina Kosir Appendix 1: Biographical Information 160 Appendix 2: ScientificTerms and Equipment 211 Preface When, in 2007, I started to interview astronomers I was aware that Cambridge had been important in the history of astronomy. I knew that astronomy had been one of the main parts of the medieval teaching syllabus in Cambridge. I knew that one of Isaac Newton’s major contributions was to understand more deeply the movement of the planets. I knew that in the 18th-century figures such as the Herschel family were important and that in the early 20th century Eddington had demonstrated the truth of Einstein’s theories and that later in the century Fred Hoyle had been a major figure in Cambridge. The three figures in this volume represent three moments in the breath-taking changes that occurred alongside dramatic improvements in astronomical technologies after the Second World War. They are, as the interviews show, only a tiny part of a complex network of figures in diverse fields who contributed to one of the most exciting theoretical fields of the second half of the 20th century. I have only met Antony Hewish once to talk to, when I did the interview, though I have seen him several times walking beside the river Cam. I was aware of his presence, however, from 1975 when I moved into a room allocated to the Department of Social Anthropology in the old Colloid Science building, which I was told that they had previously been occupied by the Department of Radio Astronomy, part of the Cavendish Laboratory, which had moved out a couple of years earlier to the New Cavendish site in West Cambridge. I was told that a Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars had been awarded in 1974 to Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish and that there had been some controversy over the work of the PhD student Jocelyn Bell who had been closely involved in the discovery. viii PREFACE The room I was in for all my years in the Department from 1975–2009 was unusual in that it had a small, sound-proofed, room included. I was told that this is where Bell had worked on a noisy terminal which relayed the odd patterns which were first taken to be signals from extra-terrestrials, and later discovered to be a new species of star, pulsars. As I was working on a very early project on computer information retrieval, I was very aware of how new technologies, both the radio telescopes and new computing power, were essential for the advances in astronomy. So, when I broadened my interview series, I was particularly keen to interview Antony Hewish. I found him to be a modest, gentle, somewhat old-world academic. After the interview, it was a particular pleasure to be able to take him back (for the first time since he had left) to his old location in the department. There he stood in the famous Maxwell lecture hall where he and Ryle had announced their discovery. He came to my room and signed the blackboard in my room. The second interviewee is Martin Rees. Martin is someone I have known as a friend and colleague for nearly fifty years. I remember a moment when I was on the committee (Fellowship Electors) that elected new Fellows to King’s College. Cambridge, unlike Oxford where Professorships are tied to Colleges, is a university where new Professors can join any College that offers them a Fellowship. There is often a strong competition by the Colleges for particularly exciting Professors. We were told by one of the Committee that we absolutely must elect Martin. ‘He is the nearest we will ever get to another Newton’, or words to that effect, was what we were told. We succeeded and during the next years until he went to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Martin was a co-Fellow. So, I would meet him socially and at College committees. After he ended his Mastership at Trinity, he came back to a Fellowship at King’s and returned to the College. He married Professor Caroline Humphrey while at Trinity, a very close colleague and friend within the Department of Social Anthropology, which strengthened my links. PREFACE ix I have long been deeply impressed and indeed in awe of Martin. He is a bird-like, acute, gentle and humble man, but with an extraordinary mind. I will just mention three examples of this. He was a few years ago head of a big Cambridge department, Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College and a leading public intellectual on television and elsewhere. In a survey to find out who was the best networked scientist in the world – in other words, scientists were asked who they were closely in touch with Martin come out top in the world, with more strong contacts than anyone else. I assumed that someone with all these different calls on their time would be frantically busy. Yet whenever I met Martin, he seemed to have infinite time. He was in no rush and showed great interest in what I was doing. And if I emailed him, he would unfailingly reply courteously within hours. Incredible. Secondly, his range of knowledge is that of a genius. Professor Herbert Huppert, himself a very distinguished Professor of Theoretical Geophysics, told me about a special meeting of top scientists from around the world, in a dozen different fields to which Martin had contributed, to honour him. The building where it was held is arranged to allow people to move easily from room to room, so there were simultaneous panels in six to ten different fields where current cutting-edge research was discussed.