Lamenting the disintegration of elite USA universities

Elite universities in the USA have nurtured and enhanced my whole academic life. In 1983, I moved to the USA as an international student, commenced a Ph.D. at Princeton, and then worked at Northwestern and Ohio State. After I returned to Australia in 1994, I visited the USA every year for several weeks for conferences, collaborations, and university visits. Much of my research was shaped by ideas I got from those trips. This blog started through the influence of I2CAM, a wonderful institution funded by the NSF. My movement into chemical physics was facilitated by attending workshops at the Telluride Science Center. I deeply appreciate my colleagues (and their institutions) for their stimulation, support, interest, encouragement, and hospitality. 

My trips to the USA only ended with COVID-19, retirement, family health issues, and my new general aversion to international travel. Currently I would be too scared to travel to the USA, based on what I read in the Travel Section of The Sydney Morning Herald.

Most importantly, what I have learned and done has been built largely on intellectual foundations laid by people in these elite universities.  Other parts of the world have played a role too, but my focus here is the USA due to current political events leading to the impending disintegration of these universities.

I readily acknowledge that these universities have flaws and need reform. On this blog, I occasionally discussed issues, such as the obsession with money, metrics, management, and marketing. Teaching undergraduates and robust scholarship has sometimes become subsidiary. I have critiqued some of the flaky science published in luxury journals by groups from these universities.

Nevertheless, if something is broken you do not fix it by smashing it. Consider a beautiful ancient vase with a large crack. You do not restore the vase by smashing it and hiring your teenage cousin to make a new one.

Reading about what is happening raises multiple questions. What is really happening? Why is it happening? How significant is it? What might it lead to? How should individuals and institutions respond? 

Today when I was on the UQ campus it was serene and the challenges my colleagues are facing, as formidable and important as they are, seem trifling compared to what I imagine is happening on Ivy campuses right now. In passing, I mention that Australia is not completely immune to what is happening in the USA. Universities here that receive some research grant funding from the USA government have had it paused or cancelled.

I can't imagine what it would be like to be an international student at Princeton right now.

On the one hand, I do not feel qualified to comment on what is happening as I am so distant. On the other hand, I do want to try and express some solidarity with and appreciation of institutions and colleagues that have blessed me and the world. I make a few general observations. This is my advice, for what it is worth, to my younger self.

Protect your mental health. You and your colleagues and your institutional are encountering an existential crisis, perhaps like none encountered before. Don't live in denial. But also don't let this consume you and destroy you as a person or a community. Limit your intake of news and how much you think about it and discuss it. Practise the basics: exercise; eat, drink, and sleep well; get help sooner than later; limit screen time; rest.

Expect the unexpected. Expect more surprises, pain, uncertainty, instability, intra-institutional conflict, and disappointments. 

Get the big picture. This is about a lot more than federal funding for universities. There are broader issues about what a university is actually for. What do you want to preserve and protect? What are you willing to compromise on? Beyond the university, many significant issues are at stake concerning politics, democracy, economics, pluralism, culture, and the law. This is an opportunity, albeit a scary one, to think about and learn about these issues.

Make the effort to have conversations across the divides. Try to  have civil and respectful discussions with people with different perspectives on how individuals and institutions should respond to the current situation. Talk to colleagues in the humanities and social sciences. Talk to those with different political perspectives, both inside and outside the university.

Read widely. History is instructive but not determinative. I recommend two very short books that I think are relevant and helpful.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.

The Power of the Powerless, by Vaclav Havel, first published in 1978 in the context of living in communist totalitarian Czechoslovakia. I have a Penguin Vintage edition which includes a beautiful introduction by Timothy Snyder, written in 2018, for a 40th Anniversary edition. 

I thank Charles Ringma for bringing both books to my attention.

What do you think? I would love to hear from people in US universities who are living through this.

The intellectual legacy of Phil Anderson

I am looking forward to reading Andrew Zangwill's book, A Mind Over Matter: Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many, that should be available in January 2021.

Andy recently gave a beautiful talk at an ICAM meeting on the life and science of Phil Anderson. I highly recommend it. Yesterday, at the UQ condensed matter theory group meeting we watched it and discussed it.

A few things that stood out to me, partly because some were new to me.

``PWA was a brilliant intuitionist who did more than any other person to transform the patchwork of ideas and techniques of what was formerly called solid state physics into the deep, subtle, and intellectually coherent discipline know as condensed matter physics.''

Phil's wife, Joyce, had an MA in English literature and edited all his prose pieces. This may explain how well written his writing for general audiences, such as Physics Today columns and book reviews in The Times Higher Education Supplement were so well written. In contrast, Phils talks and some papers were rather obscure.

PWA was a contrarian. He did not follow the pack. This is embodied in the fact that he chose to work on his PhD at Harvard with van Vleck, rather than Schwinger, who was chosen by eleven of his peers! van Vleck said "follow the data". During this time he was a friend of Tom Lehrer, a mathematics graduate student who became famous for writing and performing satirical songs with a strong social justice theme.

Phil did a BS in Electronic Physics (essentially Radio Engineering) and did not learn any modern physics. He did a PhD in chemical physics. It was only at Bell Labs that he started working on condensed matter problems. There he had three significant mentors: Conyers Herring, Gregory Wannier, and Charles Kittel.

Phil's 1952 paper on antiferromagnetism contained the idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking. But, this was not appreciated for a decade.

Phil's 1957 localisation paper and his 1961 magnetic impurities paper [the two works cited for his Nobel Prize] were both stimulated by talking to experimentalists at Bell Labs [George Feher and Berndt Matthias, respectively].

Concepts in Solids, based on his graduate lectures at Cambridge in 1961-2, was revolutionary for the time because the focus was on the properties of model Hamiltonians, rather than detailed phenomenology.

Phil's criticisms of high energy physics, its reductionism and drawing resources away from "tabletop" science, began as early as 1971, when he wrote a New Scientist article on the subject. 

But there is a lot more. Watch the video!

David Pines (1924-2018): quantum-many body theorist

I learnt today that David Pines died last week. He was a pioneer in quantum many-body theory, applying it not just to solid state physics but also to nuclear physics and astrophysics (neutron stars).  Furthermore, he was a great advocate of the importance of emergence in science, writing a classic paper, "The Theory of Everything," together with Bob Laughlin.

David also left a legacy of creative new institutions, being a co-founder of the Sante Fe Institute and the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (I2CAM). Indeed, starting this blog was stimulated by David Pines and I2CAM. In January 2009, I attended the annual meeting of I2CAM in Cambridge and David organised a session on public outreach, including a presentation on blogging.

Piers Coleman, a current co-Director of I2CAM, has written a nice obituary which gives more details about David's contributions, both scientific and institutional.

Talk to high school students

Tonight I am giving a talk to a group of high school students.
They are attending the Queensland Junior Physics Olympiad (JPhO), which is organised each year by UQ Physics.

My brief was to give a basic introduction to my research. Here are the slides from my talk.
I have never given such a talk to a high school audience before.

One of the videos featured was an old BBC documentary on superfluids.

I recommended the following resources for people wanting to learn more:

David Pines article Emergent behavior in quantum matter

A video on Reductionism and emergence featuring Paul Chaikin and Piers Coleman

Bob Laughlin's book A Different Universe: reinventing physics from the bottom up.

1000 blog posts!

I just noticed that I have now made more than 1000 posts on this blog! It is hard to believe. It all started three years ago when I heard a talk about blogging at the I2CAM annual meeting by Clifford Johnson.

The blog now gets about 3,000 page views per week. However, I still wish it generated more comments and discussion. I fear I am just not controversial enough.

The Superconducting dance

This cool video was produced by I2CAM as part of the Emergent Universe online science museum.

Frauenfelder rules for an effective workshop

Hans Frauenfelder (1922-) is arguably the doyen of biological physics. I am told that he considered that for a workshop or conference to be effective one third to one half of the time should be devoted to questions and open discussion.

These "Frauenfelder rules" have been rightly adopted by I2CAM as a requirement for any workshops that they fund.

OPV cell efficiency is an emergent property

As discussed in a previous post, the efficiency of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells appears to be largely determined by solid state (and thus collective) effects such as aggregation, sample morphology, and disorder. A striking example of this is that the efficiency of a cell can be improved significantly by annealing the thin film (i.e., just taking the film and slowly heating and then cooling it). Hence, efficiency is an emergent property and reductionist theoretical approaches that focus on the properties of isolated constituent molecules have debatable value.

At the I2CAM workshop this past week the most disappointing presentation was that from the Harvard clean energy project, led by Alan Aspuru-Gizek . This very ambitious project aims to using the world wide grid of computers (including your own PC) to run quantum chemistry codes to calculate properties of hundreds of thousands of molecules to screen them as candidates for use in OPVs. However, it must be stressed that almost all of these calculations will be on small single and isolated molecules in the gas phase.

It was claimed that one could screen for high charge mobility materials by looking at delocalisation of frontier orbitals and the reorganisation energy associated with ionisation. However, the particularly relevant quantity is the reorganisation energy of the environment of the molecule.

The speaker claimed something like "we are our own harshest critics" and listed possible weaknesses of the project. These were most concerned with whether approaches based on density functional theory (DFT) are adequate for calculating the relevant properties of these molecules. (Many people would say they are not). However, I contend that even if one could calculate exactly the properties of single molecules in the gas phase one would be a long way from being about to determine which molecules will be the best candidates for OPVs.

I asked for a specific example of where such a computational approach has been successful for any area of science and technology. It was stated that drug companies do this all the time when screening. However, I contend the physics and chemistry of that problem is much simpler and more well defined. One knows a specific active site of a protein that ones want to find a small molecule to bind to the hinder the activity at that site. This is a ground state and very local property. In contrast, for photovoltaics excited states, dynamics, and collective effects are involved, and the relevant large scale structures are not well defined. Exactly how the properties of OPVs are related to the properties of the constituent molecules is so poorly understood I am skeptical that a brute force computational approach is going to lead to much progress.

Understanding properties of dye-sensitizers

At the conference today, my colleague Seth Olsen gave a talk Stucture-Property Relationships for Conjugated Organic Dyes.

The goal is to provide a rigorous quantum chemical justification for empirical relationships such as that shown in the curve above, which shows how the absorption wavelength of a conjugated dyes varies with different substitutions at the point R in the molecule.

Much of the talk is based on his recent paper in Journal Chemical Theory and Computation.

The challenge of energy sustainability

Today at the I-CAMP School in Brisbane, Dan Cox, Director of I2CAM gave a nice talk about climate change and future energy options.

Dan has taught an undergraduate course on such issues for the past 13 years at UC Davis. (Unfortunately, the course web page seems to be down right now).

He mentioned some really nice lectures on the same topic by Nate Lewis (Caltech)

A few things I found interesting.

Graphs of energy consumption vs. GDP tend to plateaus at high incomes. i.e, affluent countries can increase their "standard of living" without increasing their energy consumption. Japan and EU use about half the energy per capita of USA/Canada, yet have comparable standards of living.

Electricity consumption is 4 times greater in Wyoming than in California.

Oil is used almost 100% for transportation. Alternative electricity sources will not reduce dependence on Middle East oil without electric cars.

M. King Hubbert was a petroleum engineer who predicted world oil production would peak in 1970. The production rate is related to the derivative of the solution to the logistic differential equation, which describes many phenomena that initially increase exponentially until finite resources limit their growth.

[Aside there was actually a West Wing episode, The Hubbert Peak]

Can you do this with your tap water?

CO2 dissolving in ocean decreases pH and destroys coral. Even if global temperatures do not increase due to increased CO2, the increase in acidity of the oceans will wreak environmental havoc.

Recommended summer school in Rio

The 4th annual I2CAM/FAPERJ Summer school "New Phenomena in Quantum Matter" will be held in Rio de Janeiro 6th-12th June, this year. Speakers include Zlatko Tesanovic, Jenny Hoffman, Suchitra Sebastian, Graeme Luke, Piers Coleman and Pascual Pagliuso. There are funds from I2CAM to support approximately 20 students from the USA, and 20 students from across, South America. Others are welcome to attend with their own funding.

Because of the short time frame to the conference, and the need for students to obtain visas, students should apply within the next two weeks. Although the application deadline will be in two weeks time, (Friday, April 23rd) the selection process will run as applications are received.

Searching for an effective Hamiltonian

In less than two weeks I head off to Bangalore, India for a week. I will be speaking at a School and Conference on “Emergent Properties and Novel Behavior at the Nanoscale” organised byI2CAM and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore.

Here is the abstract I have submitted for my conference talk.

Effective Hamiltonians for Excited States of Fluorescent Protein Chromophores

An emergent perspective on photoactive molecules leads to a search for organizing principles and effective Hamiltonians which can describe broad classes of molecules. This is in contrast to a reductionist view that claims that for each new system one must perform ab initio quantum chemistry calculations.

The expression of the Green Flourescent Protein in a wide range of systems has led to a revolution in the imaging of biomolecular processes in cells. There are now hundreds of such photoactive proteins with a wide range of tuneable photochemical properties. Developing structure-property-function relations for these molecules presents a major scientific challenge.

We have shown that insight is gained by considering a fluorescent protein chromophores as Brooker dyes which consist of two aromatic groups on either side of a methine bridge. A key feature for understanding the low-lying excited states are the resonating valence bond structures associated with this bridge [1].

We have provided a rigorous quantum chemical justification for the application of Platt’s resonance colour theory to these methine dyes. This is done by a CAS-SCF(4,3) treatment where there are four electrons in an active space of three orbitals. These orbitals turn out to be invariant for a range of protonation states, molecular geometries and substitutions. Furthermore, diabatic states in this active space can be mapped onto valence bond structures [1].

A natural consequence of this valence bond picture is the existence of a dark singlet state lying above the bright state responsible for the absorption and emission [2].

This mapping allows us to define a three state effective Hamiltonian which depends on the molecular geometry and describes the conical intersections between excited state potential energy surfaces and charge separation associated with twisting and photo-isomerisation [3].

[1] S.C. Olsen and R.H. McKenzie, J. Chem. Phys. 130, 184302 (2009). [2] S.C. Olsen and R.H. McKenzie, arXiv:1001.2593, submitted to Chem. Phys. Lett. [3] S.C. Olsen and R.H. McKenzie, J. Chem. Phys. 131, 234306 (2009).

An equation you should know

Next month I am going to India to speak at a School and Conference on “Emergent Properties and Novel Behavior at the Nanoscale” organised by I2CAM and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore.

In the school I will give a one hour long lecture. Here is the abstract I have submitted. Any feedback welcome. Some related material is discussed in this talk I gave last year in the Black Forest.

Quantum design principles for functional electronic materials

In a complex material how does one optimise the quantum efficiency of the transition

between two different quantum states when there are many alternative transitions available to a system?

Regardless of whether or not it is explicitly stated this is the question which is at the heart of a wide range of research. Prominent examples include understanding biomolecular function, designing organic photovoltaic cells, and catalysis.

I will discuss how this optimisation problem involves a subtle interplay between quantum coherence and decoherence induced by the system environment. The essential physics involved can be understood in terms of the spin-boson model which describes two quantum states which are coupled to one another with an environment which is modelled by a collection of an infinite number of harmonic oscillators.

Qualitatively different dynamics occurs depending on the relative magnitude of the key energy and time scales in the problem: the thermal energy, energy difference between the two states (epsilon), the coupling of the two states (and the associated Rabi frequency), the reorganisation energy of the environment, and the typical relaxation time of the environment.

Perhaps it is not appreciated enough that for most systems of interest all of these energy scales are well-characterised.

The incoherent "classical" regime of the spin-boson model gives a simple expression for the transition rate which is the same as the Marcus-Hush expression for the electron-transfer rate. I consider this is one of the most important equations in chemical physics and particularly for the understanding and design of functional materials.

I will discuss several important applications of this equation.

1) A design principle:

The rate is a maximum for a specific non-zero value of the coupling to the environment where epsilon equals the reorganisation energy.

2) The temperature dependence of the charge mobility in molecular materials.

[This is the same expression as given by small polaron theory].

3) Forster resonant energy transfer between chromophores.

Emergence: a virtual museum exhibit

I2CAM has just opened a new virtual museum exhibit at the Emergent Universe.
I strongly recommend it both to scientists and non-scientists.

Emergent paradoxes

A book I really like and strongly recommend is A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down by Bob Laughlin. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998 for the theoretical description of the fractional quantum Hall effect, and was a co-founder of I2CAM. Laughlin has highly original ways of looking at science and is a very gifted writer.

Laughlin is passionate advocate for emergent phenomena being the most interesting and challenging aspect of science.

Just to illustrate some of the insights.... Laughlin points out
that emergent phenomena can present significant paradoxes. Laughlin considers two paradoxes associated with the Integer Quantum Hall effect. First, there is “perfection due to imperfection”: the precision of the quantisation of the Hall resistance improves as the sample quality decreases, i.e., the number of impurities that scatter the electrons increases. Second, the Quantum Hall effect provides a very precise means to determine properties of elementary particles from measurements on macroscopic samples. It measures the fine structure constant, which is defined in terms of the properties of single electrons: the electronic charge, Planck’s constant, and the speed of light.

I2CAM receives funding renewal

The International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (I2CAM) is one of six International Materials Institutes funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. UQ is a branch campus and I am a member of the Board of Governors. I was delighted to hear yesterday that NSF announced funding would be renewed. Dan Cox and David Pines are to be congratulated for all the hard work they did to help make this happen.

Previous posts mentioned the importance of I2CAM in my research. Indeed it was a talk by Clifford Johnson, author of the blog Asymptotia, at the I2CAM annual meeting that led me to start this blog.

what is emergence?

I2CAM is developing a web-based interactive museum about emergent behavior, It is "targeted at Internet savvy individuals, typically college bound/educated 14-30 year olds, this site will introduce non-scientists and scientists alike to the concept of emergence."

Quantum biology?!?

The role of quantum dynamics in biomolecular function is of great interest to me. Unfortunately, there are some highly speculative ideas and claims being made on this topic.

I had a student, Joel Gilmore, complete a Ph.D thesis on this topic. Some of our results are published in a review article we recently published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. (My first paper in that journal!) We were able to actually quantify the effect of the environment on quantum dynamics of excited states in optically active biomolecules. This included finding the timescale relevant to the "collapse" of the wavefunction!

I also organised an Exploratory Workshop on this topic for I2CAM.

In my view, some of the key questions in this field are:

When is quantum dynamics (e.g., tunneling, coherence, and entanglement) necessary for functionality?

Do biomolecules exploit dynamics to enhance functionality?

What are the model molecular systems that should be the focus of concerted theoretical and experimental study?

What are the principles for developing nanotechnologies that can be learned from mimicking biomolecular nanoscale devices?

More posts on this topic will be forthcoming.

Overview of some of my research interests

Here are the slides for a talk I gave in Cambridge ealier this year, for the Joint Annual meeting of I2CAM and INTELBIOMAT.