- Hidden amongst all the pain
and stress of studying for exams,
you might find that physics can actually
be a very beautiful subject.
Whilst physics at school is often about meeting standards,
pleasing examiners, or being competitive,
real physics and math beyond that
can be rewarding and interesting.
I recently made some videos about the very stressful
the university entrance exam from Turkey
and there was a fair amount of despair in the comments.
Today I wanted to show a positive example
of achievement coming out of Turkey
and I wanted to do that through telling the story
of Feza Gursey who was a very successful
mathematician and physicist.
I find him very inspiring because not only
was he working on one of the hardest ideas in physics,
but he also relentlessly pursued all knowledge
art, music, poetry, and beautiful ideas.
He made significant contributions
to general relativity and particle physics
where he found symmetries
that he expressed using group theory.
Some of his work would inspire what would go on
to be called quantum chromodynamics
and Gursey was highly respected by many
of the top physicists.
To follow his journey,
let's start with a school report card.
Gursey was born in Istanbul in April 1921,
but attended primary school in Paris.
This report card is from January 1928
so when he was only six years old
but he was already earning the respect of his teachers.
His conduct and order are said to be good,
and for reading, writing, calculation and spelling
there is place first written in this column
so I guess he was top of his class.
There's also a first for grammar and for recitation.
Overall, he's said to have been doing very good.
Later he would return to Turkey
and become a boarding student at Galatasaray High School.
This is one of the enrollment documents there.
It's got his name and the number 39
which was assigned to him,
his father's name,
that he was born in Istanbul in 1921,
that he's a boarding student who entered the school in 1930.
This is stamped 1939 when he would have been
in the 11th grade
and here is a picture of him at that time.
Here's a copy of phases report card from 1939 to 1940,
there's nothing too scandalous to report here
in fact, it looks like he was quite a good student
and fairly well rounded.
Down this column we have the subjects,
and then I believe these are grades from written exams,
the first two columns,
and then an opinion note
and then the overall passing grades
signed off by the teachers.
There's a lot of nines and tens here
which I believe to be the highest.
The subjects here are literature, history,
geography, natural sciences, all tens,
also straight tens for physics and chemistry
and there's foreign language,
philosophy, mechanics, geometry, and algebra.
The second page would detail any penalties
but he doesn't seem to have any
and this is the attendance.
These are the rows for days off and days late
and it's signed by the school directors
and indicates an overall pass.
Gursey graduated from the science department
of this high school in 1940 at the top of his class
and he was said to me, a legendary student
who impressed both local and foreign teachers.
It was in high school that he decided
to dedicate his life to physics.
A classmate of Gursey said that
at school during evening study hours,
you could often find Feza reading
Proust's philosophical stories named
"In Search of Lost Time."
This is a long novel that comes in seven parts
and it's said to try to find an answer
to some of life's questions such as who am I?
And what am I to make of this life?
Feza was also said to often be examining
the artworks of Cezanne
and Feza's teachers would often call him
into the teacher lounge during breaks to chat with him.
After graduating high school,
Gursey attended the Istanbul University
and graduated with a degree in physics and math in 1944
and he graduated top of his class.
He found the curriculum at the science department
to not be challenging enough
so he still had plenty of time
to nurture his interests in poetry and art.
However he said,
"I have to learn physics in spite of everything"
perhaps indicating that he thought
he could excel in many different fields,
but felt the strongest calling towards physics.
He went to Imperial College in London
for his PhD which he received in 1950
with his thesis titled,
"Application of Quaternions to Quantum Field."
While he was a grad student,
Gursey wrote a letter to his mother
which seems to have come from a time
when he was struggling to make progress,
but was still holding on to his motivations.
He says, "I am not hanging out at parties
"as you assume dear mother, I work day and night.
"I have been holding on to the things
"that I want to work on for two years
"with all my strength: general field theory
"and relations between electromagnetic meson
"and electron fields.
"What I am currently working on cannot go beyond formalism,
"but I hope that at least if
"the Cambridge Philosophical Society accepts me,
"I can show my supervisor
"that I am not wasting all my time."
He'd said that he was trying to get
fundamental equations into quaternion formalism,
but that his supervisor thought it was unnecessary
and priggish to focus on quaternions.
But taking a look at his thesis published three years later,
it does look like he made some good progress.
The abstract says that the object of the thesis
is to show that the quaternion algebra
can be applied successfully to the discussion
and solution of directs equation
and that it can be extended to general relativity
to give an invariant formulation of field equations.
Much of his work after this focused on group theory
and its application to particle physics.
In reality, the work that he did is very advanced
and takes a lot of prior knowledge
to understand where it's coming from.
But let me give just the briefest
of introductions to group theory,
to kind of set the stage for the space
that he was working in.
But first, I would like to quickly thank Shortform.
Looking for ways to increase
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the link will be down in the description.
Now back to the group theory.
Here I have a square and a circle
and just looking at these two shapes,
the circle could be said to be more symmetrical
because there are more ways
that you could rotate it for example,
and it would still look the same.
In physics a symmetry is a feature that remains unchanged
under some transformation.
If that transformation is rotation,
then the circle has a lot more symmetry than the square.
There are an infinity of ways that I could rotate the circle
and still be left with what I started with.
However, for the square, there are some rotations
that don't leave it unchanged like this one here.
In fact, only rotations of 90 degrees or multiples of 90
would be considered symmetrical.
If we were to write down
the set of symmetries for the square,
we'd have 90, 180, 270 and 360
but one of these rotations is special
a rotation by 360 degrees
would have us ending up back where we started
which is the same as a rotation by zero degrees.
We call this the identity element
since it does remain unchanged.
Adding any of these rotations,
will give you another rotation in the set.
For example, 90 + 180 = 270.
Also, every rotation here can be undone.
If you've done a rotation of 270 and want to undo it,
you can do an additional rotation of 90
because 270 + 90 is 360 and that's the identity.
The second rotation would be considered
the inverse of the first one
and an inverse exists for every single element.
All these properties of these rotations
that I have mentioned are actually properties
of what in maths is called a group
and this set of rotations is just one example of a group.
The symmetries of the circle are also a group
but this time the elements of the group are infinite
and correspond to each possible angle of rotation.
In particle physics there is a group called SU(3)
which is very similar to the symmetries of a sphere
and physicists have used representations of this group,
to come up with structures of subatomic particles.
There is a lot of symmetry that exists
within the standard model
and often these strange new particles
are predicted before we find them in the lab,
because we can see there is a gap
or something missing in the symmetry.
If you want to go further into this,
I'll link to you the ideas
of Lie groups down in the description,
but this will also show you the basic idea
which Feza Gursey was working in,
and the kinds of topics that he was expanding with his work.
Group theory is one of the many areas in physics
where you can follow this quote,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"
in the sense that pursuing symmetries and what seems to work
to make the equations simple and beautiful,
can lead you to what is true.
It isn't always the case
but often it seems to lead you in the right direction.
Some of Feza Gursey's most important contributions
include this paper
"On the Symmetries of Strong and Weak Interactions"
published in 1960.
He also proposed something called SU(6) symmetry
for baryons and mesons.
He also applied group theory to scattering of particles
and to general relativity.
After Gursey died in 1992,
Ed Witten wrote about him and said that he was
one of the most respected members of the physics community.
He said that Feza's scientific work is marked
with remarkable originality and elegance
as well as intellectual courage.
He never hesitated to pick problems
that were not fashionable.
He worked at them in depth, planting seeds
that in some cases developed
into whole branches of our discipline.
He continues that, subsequent attempts
to understand Feza's work on the SU(6) symmetry
led to the introduction of the color of degrees
of freedom of quarks.
Ed Witten continued to describe Feza as a very cultured man.
One that you could have very deep discussions with
on the topics of music, poetry, novels and paintings
in short, on essentially any subject of depth and beauty.
I hadn't known about Feza Gursey until recently
and so I hope sharing his story helps
a few more people to know about him,
but also to provide a bit of motivation
for Turkish students especially studying for tough exams.
But I also find his story to be a reminder
to stay well rounded
physics after all, is about the world around us
and understanding it not just about passing exams.
Thanks Shortform
and thank you for watching this video.
A special shout out to today's Patron Cats of the Day,
Leo and Mischa.
(gentle music)