[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, everyone, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab, the podcast. Robert and I are about to go on tour, literally in a few hours, to LA and Seattle.

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: But before we do, we leave you with—well, why don't you set it up?

ROBERT: Well, this is just one of those crazy and wonderful conversations that just popped into being. One of my favorite books of the last couple of years was a book called The Age of Wonder. It was written by Richard Holmes, and it describes a particular group of people, a bunch of people who kind of invented modern science, sort of together in the 1780s, the 1790s and the early 1800s. A crazy and wonderful group—balloonists and explorers and astronomers who believed that the world was full of miracles and surprising rules that could be detected if you looked hard and experimented. And experimentation was their thing. Anyway, I was talking to Mr. Holmes about his book.

ROBERT: Could you move a little to the left?

ROBERT: Why he wrote it and how it all came into being.

RICHARD HOLMES: Can I move that just a bit further?

ROBERT: And I began the conversation by mentioning somebody's name.

ROBERT: It's Évariste Galois. Évariste Galois. So, like, what happened to you?

RICHARD HOLMES: [laughs] Okay, this is a great story. It's to do with how I fell into writing science after literature. There are various reasons for this. I had what I call a lost scientific childhood, which we won't go into now. But in fact, as a kid I was fascinated by science. And because of the way literature, the education is streamed, I was taken away from that. As a kid, I could build radios, I could strip a motorcycle engine. I flew model airplanes.

ROBERT: So you were one of those?

RICHARD HOLMES: I was one of those. And I had a wonderful uncle in the Royal Air Force who taught me a lot about flight. And actually I can now say it, once smuggled me in to a V bomber, an atomic bomber. I have to say we didn't take ...

ROBERT: There were bombs?

RICHARD HOLMES: It was not loaded. It was one of those big V bombers that could carry ...

ROBERT: He smuggled you in a nice way as a tourist, or he thought maybe he was going to drop you out of somewhere?

RICHARD HOLMES: [laughs] No, he thought, "Here was a kid, let's educate him." So he took me in, he showed me how it worked, sat me in the co-pilot's seat. We were still on the ground. We was not armed. And then he smuggled me out again. I've never forgotten it.

ROBERT: How were you smuggled? Under a coat?

RICHARD HOLMES: No, he just—it was on the parkway. It was his plane. It had his name on it. He was the pilot. Okay? And he said—I don't know what he said to the engineer. "I'm gonna take my nephew in," you know? Yeah. So I had that lost scientific—which all began to come back when I started work on the romantic scientist. I also had this amazing break—and we're getting to Évariste Galois now. I was given what they call a visiting fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. That's Cambridge, England. This is new Newton's college, also Byron's college. It's famous for its scientists, among other things, astrophysics particularly, and mathematics. And one ...

ROBERT: You're invited as a writer about poets. You've been now writing biographies and books about poets.

RICHARD HOLMES: That's right. And I was meant to be doing a research thing on biography, the history of literary biography. And what actually happened was I found these wonderful scientific archetypes, particularly the letters of Herschel. They're kept there in Cambridge. And I started reading those.

ROBERT: He's talking about William and Caroline Herschel. This is a brother and sister team that built big telescopes and made all kinds of fascinating discoveries about stars and planets in those days.

RICHARD HOLMES: And gradually I was drawn—I thought, this is absolutely wonderful. And all this lost side of me started floating back. Plus, at Trinity, there's this tradition—they talk about the high table. It's actually very democratic. You go in every evening to have a very rapid dinner, but you sit next to whoever happens to be there. There's no system of seating. Okay?

ROBERT: So this is you and all the other teachers?

RICHARD HOLMES: This is—no, this is all the senior research faculty and so on. Okay?

ROBERT: So these are people of import. These are weighty people.

RICHARD HOLMES: There were seven Nobel Prize winners.

ROBERT: Okay.

RICHARD HOLMES: And I sat next to each of them at various points, all right?

ROBERT: And this is one of these long tables where every plate is set differently and every knife is perfectly exactly right.

RICHARD HOLMES: That's exactly right.

ROBERT: So it's very formal.

RICHARD HOLMES: Very formal. Silverware, jugs of water and so on. And you talk, basically to the person on your left or your right, and you have to talk fast because they don't—you imagine, you know, these dons sit around boozing. They don't. I think I've really noticed the meal would probably be over in about 25 minutes. Amazing. Okay? And you talked. And once you got talking, I often never had time to finish my meal because it was—I would sit next to—I'd be next to an astrophysicist. And the famous thing I—which for me ...

ROBERT: And this was handy for you at this point. Like, you were just laughing it up.

RICHARD HOLMES: Yes. I mean, I was absolutely riveted. And I found things like scientists love to discuss their science. They are very often very good at describing it, which I loved. Compared with some of the literary dons, you know? God! And you go into literary theory. And these guys want you to understand, and I love that. On this particular occasion, I sat down to—next to a man who became clear, A) That he was Russian and he spoke no English at all; and B) that he was a mathematician. Okay?

ROBERT: About which you know ...

RICHARD HOLMES: Of which I knew very little. I was trying to learn a bit to catch up with the Herschels. Very, very little. And I thought, I cannot let this pass. There's no possibility of communication. But ...

ROBERT: You don't have the math in common or the language.

RICHARD HOLMES: Yes. Okay. So I think about this for a moment, and in studying, beginning to study this period, I have indeed been looking at the mathematicians of this period, and the French mathematicians of this period are where the cutting edge is. And there's one particular ...

ROBERT: And you're studying what, the 1790s?

RICHARD HOLMES: Yes, exactly. Particularly during the French Revolution, all right? And there's a young mathematician whose name was Évariste Galois. Galois itself is music to my ears. And he lived—his life was as short as a romantic poet. At school, he was at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, I think, got thrown out of almost every institution he was in. But he had a natural gift for mathematics, theoretical mathematics. And he also was politically rather radical. And to cut this story short, in—I forget the exact date, but maybe round about 1820, something like that, he was writing on the theory of mathematics, number theory, in a more advanced way than anybody could understand. He sent in papers to the academy.

ROBERT: Even at the age of 19.

RICHARD HOLMES: Yes, 19, 20, 21, okay? And then he was developing a theory which we'll come to, which he got involved in—we're not quite sure if it was a political thing, but it involved a duel. He was challenged to a duel. And we think it was over a young woman, as so many duels are if you're 18, 19 or 20. And he is summoned out to have this duel in the Bois de Boulogne. And the night before this duel, he sits down and he writes a mathematical paper. He puts in everything he knows into this single paper. And it's very moving. I've seen the manuscript. I have some grasp of what's going on, but it's also that there are lines of poetry in it. There are lines which are clearly about this girl. We don't know quite—we don't know what her name was.

ROBERT: Oh my God!

RICHARD HOLMES: And the repeated thing is, "I have no time. I have no time. There is no time." So he's cramming this all in until dawn. I mean, it's an unbelievable situation, this paper.

ROBERT: And the math is in there too?

RICHARD HOLMES: And the math is in there too, okay? And he completes this theory—and we'll come to this in a moment. And then he goes out and he's shot and he dies. And this paper is left on his desk, and his great friend saves it and it's published about, I think, about 20 years later.

ROBERT: The math bits, or ...

RICHARD HOLMES: The maths.

ROBERT: Not the love stuff.

RICHARD HOLMES: Not the love stuff. And it's the beginning of a stage in mathematical theory which is called group theory.

ROBERT: Group theory.

RICHARD HOLMES: All right? Now this much I knew. And very, very broadly, here's my analogy to what group theory is; very, very dangerous this. It's to do with certain kinds of equations, all right? You know, those things with an equal sign and A B, okay?

ROBERT: [laughs]

RICHARD HOLMES: And it involves what they call cubics. So when something is X to the power of three, it's a particular form of equation which will—you cannot work it. It will not produce the result. It will when it's squared, but not when it's cubed or when it's—what would it call four times and so on. Okay?

ROBERT: So it's a temperamental equation.

RICHARD HOLMES: It's a temperamental equation, and no mathematician had found a way of solving it at the higher power. All right? So the analogy is it's like a box which when it reaches a certain size, you can't open it anymore. Okay? Now group theory will be—this is my version of it, which I'd vaguely come to understand. It's like you can't open that box. So what you do is you put that box inside a bigger box, and you can open the bigger box and that somehow lets you into the little one. Okay? I can't take you further than that.

ROBERT: I don't need to go any further.

RICHARD HOLMES: So back to the Russian mathematician. So I turned to him, as it were, with the soup thing still in my hand and I said, Évariste Galois.

ROBERT: You just needed to start the conversation?

RICHARD HOLMES: That's right. That's the only thing I could think of doing.

ROBERT: You just blurted out the name of a 19-year-old ancient French mathematician?

RICHARD HOLMES: Yeah, not-so-ancient romantic French mathematician. I looked him dead between the eyes, I said, "Évariste Galois." And there was a pause. And to this day, this wonderful thing. He looked at me and this sort of seraphic grin passed his face. And then he did this gesture which you cannot see being radio, which is so visual, but what it is, his right hand went over his heart as if he was saluting the flag, all right? And then both hands went outwards in a big embracing gesture. And what he was saying to me, to start off was, "Évariste Galois, so dear to my heart and to any mathematician," all right? And then the big gesture meant he invented group theory, okay? And then he looked at me, and then his smile got bigger. And then he leaned across the table and he pulled in all the crockery, the silver water jug, the knife, the fork, the plates. And he showed me group theory, of what I tried to explain to you the little box inside the big box in terms of the knives, forks, spoons, plates, salt cellars.

ROBERT: No words.

RICHARD HOLMES: No words. There was no words. I knew he was talking about group theory, and that's how he explained it to me.

ROBERT: So if I hear the sound first of a hand going, and then I hear the clanking of silverware ....

RICHARD HOLMES: Well, there's this wonderful gesture which spreads right. The broad gesture. Yes. And in a wonderful way—and it's very trinity, this—none of the other dons turn a hair. The man, he's dragging all the crockery over and thinking, "Oh, yes, yes, of course. You know, what else would we expect?" And there he is explaining to me, and giving this model that I've tried to explain on air as the little box you can't open. You put it in a bigger box.

ROBERT: But this conversation was 10 minutes long. Seven minutes long?

RICHARD HOLMES: Well, it couldn't be more than 25 because the dinners never lasted more. I think that was one of the days I don't think I ate anything from the thing. I think I had a glass of water. Maybe I had a glass of wine, probably to keep myself going.

ROBERT: But that whole conversation took place wordlessly.

RICHARD HOLMES: Yes. And I say that for sort of the period of time, that 20 minutes, I sort of understood group theory, because he somehow, the way he did it, I thought, "Oh, yes. Okay, it's that, it's that, it's that." And to me, it was a sort of revelation moment, really. And I thought, "I love you science people, that you won't—nothing will stop you. You are jolly well going to explain this." And also I thought, you know, here I am sitting at one of the great universities with this chance to learn, okay? And learn a new field. And so this guy, this wonderful Russian mathematician, he's done this to me. I am now going to—I will work at this and try and produce—I know this is a big leap, but it was in my mind. I will try and write a book that will somehow do the same thing. I don't know how the hell I'm going to do this at this time, okay? I don't know enough science, but I'll work at it.

ROBERT: And that's how he got to write the Age of Wonder, which was the best book of the year from the National Academies of Science and Engineering and whatever the other one is. And it is such a—oh, man!

JAD: It's kind of an adventure story.

ROBERT: It's an adventure.

JAD: It's great.

ROBERT: Anyway, so that's Richard Holmes, and I guess that's the podcast.

JAD: It is. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[LISTENER: Hi, Radiolab. My name is Melanie McCarty. I'm from Washington, DC. I listen to Radiolab. Here is the thing you sent me. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Okay, I guess that's it. Thanks, guys.]

 

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