From all over the world I get thousands of e-mail messages. They are out on the Internet, and it seems that they are tremendously popular: Stanford is not the only place with people hungry to learn physics. The result was a sequence of courses intended to bring these students to the forefront of modern physics and cosmology.įortunately, someone (not I) had the bright idea to videorecord the classes. They were ready to try their hand at learning the real thing-with equations. A lot of them had a bit of background, a bit of physics, a rusty but not dead knowledge of calculus, and some experience at solving technical problems. They wanted more than the Scientific American experience. What became clear after a couple of quarters is that the students were not completely satisfied with the layperson’s courses I was teaching. Also, having been “around the block” a few times, they were not at all afraid to ask questions, so the class had a lively vibrancy that academic classes often lack. These students were there for only one reason: Not to get credit, not to get a degree, and not to be tested, but just to learn and indulge their curiosity. And it was very satisfying in a way that teaching undergraduate and graduate students was sometimes not. So I thought that it might just serve my purposes in finding someone to explain physics to, as well as their purposes, and it might also be fun to teach a course on modern physics. This program offers courses for people in the local nonacademic community. That’s when I first found out about Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. There ought to be a way for people to develop their interest by interacting with active scientists, but there didn’t seem to be one. As a rule, Stanford and other universities don’t allow outsiders into classes, and, for most of these grownups, going back to school as a full-time student is not a realistic option. Unfortunately there was not much opportunity for such folks to take courses. Now, after a career or two, they wanted to get back into it, at least at a casual level. They had had all kinds of careers but never forgot their one-time infatuation with the laws of the universe. As it happens, the Stanford area has a lot of people who once wanted to study physics, but life got in the way. Figuring out the best way to explain something is almost always the best way to understand it yourself.Ībout ten years ago someone asked me if I would teach a course for the public. Even when I’m at my desk doing research, there’s a dialog going on in my head. For me it’s much more than teaching: It’s a way of thinking. He is the author of The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design and The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. Susskind teaches a popular series of Stanford Continuing Studies courses in modern physics called The Theoretical Minimum. He has, with Art Friedman, written a series of companion books to the courses also called The Theorectical Minimum, the latest of which is Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory.I’ve always enjoyed explaining physics. Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory, having, with Yoichiro Nambu and Holger Bech Nielsen, independently introduced the idea that particles could in fact be states of excitation of a relativistic string. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for his Scientific American article on black holes. LEONARD SUSSKIND is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University, and director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics.
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