Lee's Fest

On June 6th, Lee Smolin turned 70. This created the occasion for a meeting of ideas, creativity, and friendship. On the first week of June, Perimeter Institute hosted a conference honoring one of its funding members, whose vision shaped the institute since its beginnings 25 years ago. The conference was filled with fond memories of those early years of the institute, as well as from before. The earliest memories were shared by Herb Bernstein, Lee’s teacher at Hampshire College, where much of the inspiration for an engaged and creative way of learning come from.

Many participants brought recollections of seminal scientific ideas at the origin of Loop Quantum Gravity. On the first day, Carlo Rovelli reviewed the results in his joint papers with Lee: the loop representation, the computation of the discrete spectra for area and volume, and the first definition of the Hamiltonian evolution. He weaved the recollection of those results with an inspiring tale of a great scientific and human friendship. More presentations, then, composed a shining mosaic of those  early loopy days. From Ted Jacobson, that together with Lee found the first solutions of the Wheeler-deWitt equations using loops, to Abhay Ashtekar, mentioning the “3-man paper” at the foundation of Loop Quantum Gravity. From Viqar Husain, the first student of Lee in Yale, to Madhavan Varadarajan, who was later the first student of Lee in Syracuse. And to Seth Major, also graduate student of Lee, with whom he pioneered the use of quantum groups in LQG. All the way to some of the latest students of Lee in PI, such as LinQing Cheng, today working at the intersection between quantum gravity and quantum information. All together they painted a beautiful arc, bridging from the beginning of quantum gravity to the research going on today. More contributions on loops and beyond included those by Bianca Dittrich, Laurent Freidel, Etera Livine, Simone Speziale, and myself - mentioning the spinnetwork evolution studied by Lee and Fotini Markopoulou seminal for the development of spinfoams.

The conference reflected the large diversity of research directions that Lee has explored, in particular in quantum foundations, cosmology, and philosophy. The many different contributions highlighted how Lee’s work has reached diverse fields, always keeping as distinctive trait the combination of technical skills and an uncompromising intellectual courage. An example of this is his idea of applying natural selection in cosmology, brilliantly merging ideas and tools from biology into the evolution of the universe. Or his attempt to use gauge theory to understand the financial market. The list can be long! Indeed, the most astonishing trait emerging from all the tributes paid to Lee during the conference is the diversity of directions from which Lee has taken inspiration. Including, very importantly, art.

Therefore, a celebrations of Lee’s science needed to be also a celebration of his interactions with artists: the conference hosted a visual art exhibition, a jazz concert, a debate about the creative connubium of art and science, a piece of music composed for Lee, the reading of a poem dedicated to him… and even a movie world premiere! I think such special atmosphere enabled some of the speakers to give their best to convey their scientific message in a way effective and unconventional as ever (kudos to Fay Dawker’s theatrical performance, just to highlight one).

Sharing this week with Lee, and listening and participating to the unusually ample discussions during the conference, has been for many a heartwarming experience. Many stories repeatedly highlighted Lee’s generosity, especially when it come to support younger researcher. Those who benefited from past interactions with Lee, by sharing their stories, have certainly inspired the younger participants and presented an example of the kind of scientist and human being to which we can look up. Even if you were not there, not all inspiration have been lost: most of the conference has been recorded and videos can be found at pirsa.org/c25023.

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