MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Event

May 8, 2023
The Challenge to Convey Stephen Hawking's Unification Research to Museum Audiences

In 2021 the Science Museum obtained the entire contents of Stephen Hawking's office at Cambridge University. Our future plans include describing to the wider public the scientific contributions of Hawking, as evidenced in hundreds of acquired objects.

Some of these contributions are well described by his colleagues and by historians: his early work on the theory of the big bang, and his development of Hawking radiation, while difficult to explain to general audiences, are scientifically well acknowledged. The participation of Hawking and his collaborators in the large international communities that tackled cosmic inflation in the 1970s-90s is also comparatively straightforward. And we also plan to acknowledge his lifetime interest in gravitational waves, deeply linked to all the developments just described.

The most difficult challenge to be tackled this year pertains to Hawking's later attempts, from the late 1970s onwards, to unify general relativity and quantum physics: these were efforts that followed the siren call of supersymmetric theories. A good portion of Hawking's students, multiple scientific publications, and some of the most stellar objects in his office, bear witness to this work on supergravity, superstrings and M-theory.

Conveying this scientific work to our audiences involves coming to terms with the four-decade life cycle of supersymmetric theories, whose status has been continually disputed by scientists and philosophers. How should we assess and make accessible scientific work that may not have been as fruitful as promised? Beyond Hawking, this was the monumental effort of an entire generation of theoreticians that remains empirically weak. In the progress and scientific debates surrounding these unifying theories we will need to tackle, for general audiences, modern physicists’ philosophical and sociological assumptions, such as the relative status they ascribe to empirical verification, mathematical elegance, disciplinary boundaries and community consensus. Due to Hawking’s fame, these debates also involved mass media participation, which likely shaped the trajectory of the involved communities and their theories.

Organizer(s)
Address
MPIWG, Harnackstraße 5, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Room
Villa, Room V005/Seminar Room
Contact and Registration

Link to the Zoom-Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/94690790127 Meeting-ID: 946 9079 0127 no registration required. For more information contact Kseniia Mohelsky officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

About This Series

The seminar series of the Research Group “Historical Epistemology of the Final Theory Program” runs once a month, usually on a Monday at 14:00 in the seminar room of the Villa (Harnackstraße 5). The talks deal primarily with the history, philosophy, and foundations of modern (post-WWII) physics or with wider epistemological questions related to the work of the group. There are no pre-circulated papers.

Full program of the seminar series, Research Group “Historical Epistemology of the Final Theory Program”
2023-05-08T14:00:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2023-05-08 14:00:00 2023-05-08 16:00:00 The Challenge to Convey Stephen Hawking's Unification Research to Museum Audiences In 2021 the Science Museum obtained the entire contents of Stephen Hawking's office at Cambridge University. Our future plans include describing to the wider public the scientific contributions of Hawking, as evidenced in hundreds of acquired objects. Some of these contributions are well described by his colleagues and by historians: his early work on the theory of the big bang, and his development of Hawking radiation, while difficult to explain to general audiences, are scientifically well acknowledged. The participation of Hawking and his collaborators in the large international communities that tackled cosmic inflation in the 1970s-90s is also comparatively straightforward. And we also plan to acknowledge his lifetime interest in gravitational waves, deeply linked to all the developments just described. The most difficult challenge to be tackled this year pertains to Hawking's later attempts, from the late 1970s onwards, to unify general relativity and quantum physics: these were efforts that followed the siren call of supersymmetric theories. A good portion of Hawking's students, multiple scientific publications, and some of the most stellar objects in his office, bear witness to this work on supergravity, superstrings and M-theory. Conveying this scientific work to our audiences involves coming to terms with the four-decade life cycle of supersymmetric theories, whose status has been continually disputed by scientists and philosophers. How should we assess and make accessible scientific work that may not have been as fruitful as promised? Beyond Hawking, this was the monumental effort of an entire generation of theoreticians that remains empirically weak. In the progress and scientific debates surrounding these unifying theories we will need to tackle, for general audiences, modern physicists’ philosophical and sociological assumptions, such as the relative status they ascribe to empirical verification, mathematical elegance, disciplinary boundaries and community consensus. Due to Hawking’s fame, these debates also involved mass media participation, which likely shaped the trajectory of the involved communities and their theories. MPIWG, Harnackstraße 5, 14195 Berlin, Germany Villa, Room V005/Seminar Room MPRG Final Theory Program MPRG Final Theory Program Europe/Berlin public