Questions to ask about possible writing projects

When considering a writing project it is good to think about the nature and feasibility of the project. Here my focus is not on projects a typical scientist has to do such as writing a thesis or writing research papers. Rather I'm concerned with optional projects such as writing a review article, a popular book, a popular article, or a book chapter. I find the following questions helpful. The answers may be inter-related. Hence, answers to the earlier ones may need to be revised after answering the later ones.

What is my main message?

The goal is not to write a book or an article. The goal is to communicate something, something that is important and interesting.

Who is my audience?

This will really shape how you write the piece and where you try to publish it.

Am I the best person to write this piece?
In different words, who is my competition?

What is my real goal? 

To have fun? To enjoy the process? To learn something new? To become rich and famous?
To fulfill the tenure requirement of my university for "public engagement"? To get lots of citations? [Review articles are a good way to do this.] To show the general public why condensed matter physics is such a rich, exciting, and important field? To showcase my latest research results?

Clarifying your goal is necessary to answer the next question.

What is the likelihood I will achieve my goal?

Some of the goals above are much easier to achieve than others.

Besides me, who thinks that this project is a worthwhile endeavour?

Sometimes we are not very objective or realistic in our plans and aspirations. We may even delude ourselves about the importance of the proposed message, our ability to communicate it, and the likelihood of achieving our goal. Hence, an objective evaluation by more experienced colleagues and editors can save us time, pain, and disappointment.

What is the genre? What is the medium?

Is it a blog post, a piece in The Conversation, an article in Scientific American, a review article in a particular journal, or a textbook?
By the medium, I mean who will be my publisher (broadly defined)? Anyone can write a blog post. But if you want to publish a textbook you need a good publisher and contract.  For example, I am writing Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction;  it is part of a series with a well-defined genre. The medium comes with some editorial support, marketing, and distribution.

What are model examples that I can use for inspiration and for comparison?

For example, with A Very Short Introduction, I have read and looked over many other in titles in the series, on a wide range of topics: Marx, Literary Theory, Complexity, Physical Chemistry, Depression, Corruption, Elementary Particles. That's helped me find ones I like and ones I don't like. Thinking through why helps me see how I want to write mine. By the way, the best one that I have read so far is Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Do I have the time, energy, and resources to see this project to completion?

It will take longer than you think. It will be harder than you think. The larger and the more ambitious the project, the greater this will be. Co-authors may lighten the workload and also enhance the project. But, they may also complicate things. Are their potential commenters on drafts or editors?

Can I do this project in stages? Can I start small and then build up to a larger project?

For example, can I go from a series of blog posts to an article and then to a popular book? This gradual approach can make things a lot more feasible. Also, one can get useful feedback along the way, both about content and level of interest. 

All these questions reflect what is happening this week for me. I am on a writer's retreat with my friends in the "holy" scribblers eclectic writing group. Each evening we discuss projects that we're working on and give another feedback. I am mostly working on my Very Short Introduction, and other members of the group represent some of my target audience. The picture above is the view from my writing desk.=

Do you have any other suggested questions? 

Feel free to share your own experiences.

Nobel Prize predictions for 2020

It is that time of year again. My physics predictions are the same as last year.

For physics this year I predict
Experiments for testing Bell inequalities and elucidating the role of entanglement in quantum physics
Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger
They received the Wolf Prize in 2010, a common precursor to the Nobel. 

My personal preference for the next Nobel for CMP would be centred around Kondo physics since that is such a paradigm for many-body physics, maybe even comparable to BCS.

Kondo effect and heavy fermions
Jun Kondo, Frank Steglich, David Goldhaber-Gordon

Arguably the latter two might be replaced with others who worked on heavy fermions and/or Kondo in quantum dots.
Steglich discovered heavy fermion superconductivity.
Goldhaber-Gordon realised tuneable Kondo and Anderson models in quantum dots (single-electron transistors).

Unlike many, I still remain to be convinced that topological insulators are worthy of a Nobel.

How about other prizes?

The nomination deadline was January 31, before most people appreciated the significance of covid-19. I predict next year that their will be at least one prize (Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, or Peace) relating to public health and/or viruses. One possibility would be Bill and Melinda Gates for Peace.

Here are a few unusual suggestions.

Literature: Lin-Manuel Miranda for Hamilton

Peace (more likely next year): Colin Kaepernick and/or Black Lives Matter, Joshua Wong and/or other Hong Kong protestors, Jacinda Ardern.

On peace, here are some other ideas.

What do you think?

Money and more is different

Phil Anderson's classic article, "More is different" from 1972 has a somewhat humorous and enigmatic ending.

In closing, I offer two examples from economics of what I hope to have said. Marx said that quantitative differences become qualitative ones, but a dialogue in Paris in the 1920's sums it up even more clearly: 

FITZGERALD: The rich are different  from us. 

HEMINGWAY: Yes, they have more money. 

So, what is this all about? What is the background? 

According to an article in the Financial Times

There is an apocryphal tale about an exchange between two of America’s most famous novelists on the nature of wealthy individuals. F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, is reputed to have said: “The rich are different from you and me.” In reply, Ernest Hemingway is quoted as saying: “Yes, they have more money.” 

 As it happens, the quote attributed to Fitzgerald seems to be a corruption of a line in The Rich Boy, his 1926 short story: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

With regard to Marx, as far as I can tell, the idea that "quantitative differences become qualitative differences" was discussed by Friedrich Engels in his unfinished 1883 work, Dialectics of Nature. The manuscript, drew on three "laws of dialectics" proposed by Hegel. The first law is

1. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).

An entry from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia illustrates the central role this "law" played in Soviet ideology, particularly in giving a "scientific" basis for the dialectical materialism at the centre of Marxist-Leninist philosophy.

A paper in PNAS in 2000 comments

Marx himself seems to have made only limited use of the explanatory power of the transition from quantity to quality. For example, in Capital, he noted “the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel … that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes,” and illustrated this process in the economic sphere by speaking of “the minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor of money … must command to metamorphose himself into a capitalist …” (2).

Clarifying vision, strategy, tactics, goals, objectives, ...

 In any area of life, and particularly in science, it is important to know who you are, where you are, and where you want to head. This is true not just for individuals but also for institutions and communities. This then leads to discussions about mission, vision, goals, strategy, objectives, ... And as time passes how do you evaluate progress and adjust course? This is even more relevant today because the pandemic has upended so much.

Such discussion, and our thinking, can quickly become confusing because some of these terms mean different things to different people. Furthermore, it is easy to start conflating the terms. This is particularly unhelpful when "means and ends" and "inputs and outputs" get inverted, as when people become obsessed with metrics. For example, when the mission of a university becomes to rise in the global rankings or for an individual to increase their h-index, then things go pear-shaped.

Here I just want to try and clarify, partly for my own benefit, what all these different terms might mean, interacting with some of the literature out there. However, I should stress that there is no consensus on either the terminology or approach and it is not clear to me that there needs to be. Rather I think the most important thing is to have some sort of clear framework that is agreed upon by all the participants in these types of discussions. Note that it is hard to be completely precise with the definitions and the distinctions between them.

Mission: this is your identity and purpose (your passions, gifts, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities)

Vision: this is the future that you would like to see become reality

Goal: a concrete outcome

Strategy: the approach you take

Tactics: the short-term actions you take to implement your strategy

Objectives: things that can be evaluated to see whether your tactics are moving you forwards and your strategy is working. [Personally I think it is best is these are qualitative rather than quantitative, but perhaps that is an over-reaction to metric mania].

This figure is taken from a Harvard Business Review article 

How to Do Strategic Planning Like a Futurist by Amy Webb

The distinctions are best illustrated with concrete examples such as below.

Mission: this is your purpose and identity (your passions, gifts, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities)

Sarah is a theorist working at the interface of soft condensed matter and biological physics. She has tenure and works at a leading research university. 

Vision: this is the future that you would like to see become reality

To see a new scientific synergy between the cell biology and soft condensed matter communities. This synergy will be valued by both communities.

Goal: a concrete outcome

That a major open question in cell biology will be answered by the use of concepts and/or techniques from soft condensed matter. That cell biology would provide a new model system to be studied by soft condensed matter physicists.

Strategy: the approach you take

Play the long game. Learn. Educate. Be humble. Build trust, interest, and collaborations.

Tactics: the short-term actions you take to implement your strategy

Learn as much as possible about cell biology by reading and talking to cell biologists in her university. Attend their seminars and conferences.  Invite some cell biologists to give a physics colloquium and to attend Sarah's group meeting.

Objectives: things that can be evaluated to see whether your tactics are moving you forwards and your strategy is working

Get an unsolicited invitation to speak at a major cell biology conference. Build a local collaboration that results in one joint paper in the journal Cell and another in PRL. Get a joint NIH grant. For Sarah to have some of her papers from physics journals cited in Cell. To see several soft condensed matter concepts, results, and/or techniques described in an introductory textbook on cell biology.

What do you think? Is this helpful? Are there any particular tools or articles that you have found helpful?

Emergent quasi-particles and gauge fields in quantum matter

Unfortunately, there is a paucity of good review articles that give gentle introductions to current research in condensed matter, both for beginning graduate students and for curious non-experts. Too many reviews are exhaustive, in both senses of the word! Contemporary Physics is a journal that aims to address this problem. I should look at it more often. In 2009, there was a nice 50th-anniversary issue, featuring some significant articles, with retrospective commentary. For example, there is a fascinating article about Snow Crystals by F.C. Franks.

My UQ colleague, Ben Powell recently submitted a nice review to the journal.

Emergent particles and gauge fields in quantum matter 

I give a pedagogical introduction to some of the many particles and gauge fields that can emerge in correlated matter. The standard model of materials is built on Landau's foundational principles: adiabatic continuity and spontaneous symmetry breaking. These ideas lead to quasiparticles that inherit their quantum numbers from fundamental particles, Nambu-Goldstone bosons, the Anderson-Higgs mechanism, and topological defects in order parameters. I then describe the modern discovery of physics beyond the standard model. Here, quantum correlations (entanglement) and topology play key roles in defining the properties of matter. This can lead to fractionalised quasiparticles that carry only a fraction of the quantum numbers that define fundamental particles. These particles can have exotic properties: for example Majorana fermions are their own antiparticles, anyons have exchange statistics that are neither bosonic nor fermionic, and magnetic monopoles do not occur in the vacuum. Gauge fields emerge naturally in the description of highly correlated matter and can lead to gauge bosons. Relationships to the standard model of particle physics are discussed.

 

Kondo effect in the New York Times!

The Kondo effect is a paradigm for quantum many-body physics. It has so much: non-perturbative effects, scaling, emergent energy scales, Bethe ansatz solution, asymptotic freedom, Fermi liquid, ...

The Kondo model is a benchmark for testing many approximations and numerical methods.

Furthermore, it connects to so many other things: Anderson single impurity model, Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, heavy fermions, ...

Nevertheless, outside the strongly correlated electron community, it is not widely known, and particularly not in popular discussions of science.

I never thought it would feature at the beginning of the New York Times article, unless Jun Kondo (now 90 years old) was awarded a belated Nobel Prize.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a long profile of Myriam Sarachik that began with her experimental work on the Kondo effect back in 1963.

The article also chronicles some of the sexism she faced in her career and the very limited employment options there were for women in physics. The article also describes how she was not very "productive" for a decade due to recovering from the personal tragedy of the murder of her daughter. Yet, as her mental health recovered she made significant contributions: quantum tunneling in single molecule magnets and the metal-insulator transition in semiconductor heterostructures.

There is a longer autobiographical piece in Annual Reviews.

Emergence, surprises, and the future of condensed matter physics

 Where is condensed matter physics heading? Does it have a bright future? What are the big questions the field aims to (and might actually) address? What might we predict?

I need to address these kinds of questions in the last chapter of Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction.

Here are three different perspectives.

1. Incremental advances.

We will continue to make advances on many fronts: chemical synthesis, device fabrication, experimental techniques, theory, computation, intellectual synthesis, connections with other disciplines, and technological applications. The basic intellectual structure of the discipline is in place. In the framework of Thomas Kuhn, it is "normal science" and we don't expect any "paradigm shifts." John Horgan provocatively proclaimed a quarter of a century ago that it is The End of Science.

2. Hype.

All of the forthcoming incremental advances will combine together to produce a revolution: materials by design. Suppose we want a material with specific properties, e.g., room temperature superconductivity with a high critical current density, and processible into durable wires.... We put this information into the computer and it will tell us the chemical composition, synthesis method, crystal structure, and material properties.

3. We don't know. Expect big surprises as we explore the endless frontier.

Condensed matter physics is all about emergent phenomena. By definition, emergent phenomena are hard to predict, even when you know many (or all) of the details of the system components and their interactions. They are often surprising. Sometimes we can explain (or at least rationalise) them a posteriori (after the fact) by rarely a priori. 

Just consider some of the long list of exotica from the past four decades: quantum Hall effects, many new classes of superconductors (heavy fermion, organic, cuprate, iron-based, buckyballs, cobaltates, ..), non-Fermi liquid metals, topological insulators, graphene, twisted graphene, colossal magnetoresistance, spin ices, macroscopic quantum tunneling magnets, superconducting qubits, ... Note that almost all of these were experimental discoveries first. Theorists may have had some inklings and broad suggestions of what to look for and where. However, that is quite different from there being consensus and expectation. For example, compare and contrast these discoveries with the case of the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson. It really wasn't that surprising and there was a strong consensus among theorists; both that it would be there and what specific properties it would have.

Perhaps, serendipity remains the best method of discovery.

What's next? Who knows?!

All I am game to predict is that CMP will continue to be an exciting discipline with many surprises and intellectual challenges.

What do you think?