The Michael Green Experience
It’s been a couple of weeks since the University of Cambridge announced that the successor to Stephen Hawking as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics would be Michael Green, who is best known for his work on string theory. Heartiest congratulations to him for reaching a position of such eminence.
I was trying to think of a suitable way of marking the occasion of his election to this prestigious post when I suddenly remembered that we were actually on a TV programme together years ago. The show in question was called Unravelling the Universe and was first broadcast in December 1991 as part of a science documentary series called Equinox.
I eventually found my ancient VHS copy of the broadcast master tape of this show and persuaded Ed and Stephen, two of the excellent elves that work in the School of Physics & Astronomy here at Cardiff University, to transfer it to a digital format and put a bit on Youtube for all to see. Many thanks to them for their help.
Other people involved in the programme included Rocky Kolb, Chris Isham and Paul Davies but the short (2-and-a-half minute) clip below features just Michael Green (who basically put the show together) and myself (who was just there to make up the numbers), plus wonderful narration by the late great Peter Jones.
Michael Green hasn’t changed a bit in 18 years. In fact, I saw him last year and am sure he was even wearing the same sweater.
I, on the other hand….Oh dear.
October 30, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Yes, congratulations Michael Green. He probably got a reduction on
his jumper after working at M&S for 20 years. Did he get you the
leather jacket, too?
October 30, 2009 at 2:32 pm
No, it was my own jacket. I wore it at the insistence of the director. I still have it, in fact, although nowadays I never wear it outside the bedroom.
October 30, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Don’t be fooled by the sweater. I know someone who knows someone who worked with Carl Sagan on the COSMOS television programme. He had an entire closet of light-brown corduroy blazers. It seems that they often filmed outdoor sequences early in the morning when the light was good, but dew still on the grass. Not wanting a wet blazer to detract from Carl’s presentation, he could go through a few in just one morning’s shooting.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Carl_Sagan_Planetary_Society.JPG/225px-Carl_Sagan_Planetary_Society.JPG
Carl Sagan is rightly remembered as a great populariser of science, but he also had 622 publications, an h-index of 24 or 25 and was editor of Icarus for years. Time to put on my T-shirt with the Pioneer plaque:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pioneer_plaque.svg
I’ll refrain from posting a photo of my wife and myself in a similar pose (but might be persuaded to do so if Peter posts some of himself wearing his leather jacket in his bedroom).
November 1, 2009 at 9:44 pm
It’s a GREEN SWEATER, of course.
November 1, 2009 at 10:15 pm
*groan*
November 2, 2009 at 11:03 am
Of course, Green’s early co-author in the field of string theory was Schwarz, which means “black” in German (English cognate: swarthy). Maybe he should have gone into chromodynamics instead.
November 2, 2009 at 1:51 pm
“Green and Black’s” is an upmarket brand of chocolate…
November 2, 2009 at 3:05 pm
[...] Despite popular demand, here is more of the Unravelling the Universe show I posted a little bit from a few days ago. My total screen time on this programme only amounted to a couple of minutes, so I [...]
November 2, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Hhmm…Should that be Green’s and Black’s? Or is “Green and Black” such a unit that just one “’s” is needed? Or should it be “Green and Black Chocolate”? Of course, there is green tea and black tea.
Bizarre rule of English #43: If a noun has an irregular plural, it is used when forming compound adjective, otherwise the singular is used. Example: “mice-infested barn”, but “rat-infested barn”. No-one should say “rats-infested barn” nor “mouse-infested barn”.
November 2, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Styles change. We used to have “Maxwell’s equations”, but now they are the Maxwell equations. And the Green function.
November 2, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Phillip,
David Mermin wrote an entire essay on whether it should be the Lagrangian or the Lagrangean (Physics Today, April 1988, p9). I think you’d like it.
Anton
November 2, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Were time travel possible, perhaps he could acknowledge me in the acknowledgments.