Master of the universe
Michael Green is the new Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge – following in the footsteps of Newton and Hawking. So does the pioneer of string theory think he holds the answers to life's mysteries? The history of scientific discovery has an alternate history of ifs, many quite quotidian: if the apple had not fallen on Newton's head, if Archimedes hadn't overfilled his bath … And if Michael Green, visiting from London, had not wandered into the canteen at Cern in Switzerland and bumped into John Schwarz, visiting from California, string theory, which for the last couple of decades has been touted as the most likely route to the holy grail of physics – a theory of everything – would not now exist. Though Green, who talks very fast, eyes searching my face for signs of comprehension, is not self-aggrandising enough to put it like...
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