Learning from ancestors

When I worked with Andy Millis, my doctoral supervisor, I was completely impressed by his sapience. One of the most intuitive mind that I have met! I am so grateful now for the best practices that I learned from him “by just watching”, as a child learns by inspecting a parent.

What fraction of these best practices is inherited from his predecesors? What are those ideas, approaches, tastes, rules, etc., that are transmitted through academic generations? I don’t know … but I like history and couldn’t resist searching for links to the past. At the end, these little things end up shaping our careers.

Quantum

Quantum physics connects beauty in nature (entailed by the harmony of proportions behind symmetries) with statistics. When I arrived to Columbia, it felt very inspiring to know that more than 10 Nobel prizes in Physics were associated with the Department. Therefore, despite having exploited quantum physics in my Master’s thesis at UNal, I decided to start from scratch and take the required courses again for a deeper understanding. The thing is so beautiful that, paraphrasing Prof. Gyulassy’s words: “solving each exercise in the homeworks was a matter of honor”.

Fig. 1: My node and parents according to the Academic Family Tree.

Later I knew that some of the architects of such a theory like Born, Ehrenfest, and Pauli, were not mythological figures only found in books; but people in my line of academic ancestors (see Fig. 1), connected to persons whom I know. The real fun began when Andy suggested to me several papers to read, among which Hershfield’s paper embarked me into a fascinating journey.

Many

Thermodynamics connects the statistics of many bodies with irreversibility. Inevitably, I quickly became obsessed about understanding the coexistence of the quantum and the many. Specifically, having a reversible world at the micro scale which, all of a sudden, becomes irreversible at the macroscale was blowing my mind.

Fig. 2: Peeking above my 5th academic ancestor in the Academic Family Tree.

This is a sticky problem, transmitted as unsolved perhaps since the founding fathers of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, some of them (Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Kelvin) surprisinly appearing in my line of academic ancestors (see Fig. 2).

My doctoral thesis summarizes part of my adventure: the treatment of entropy as a quantum observable and the derivation of some of the most relevant implications for thermodynamics. Thanks Profs. Burmistrov and Lunkin, from the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, for referencing my work in your Lecture Notes on Statistical Mechanics.

Poly

I have learned to aim my curiosity to several kinds of research problems. Currently, my challenge is deeply understanding the information-theory aspects of artificial intelligence. I want to get a broad view of the topic which allows me to collaborate in a wide range of applications.

The search for harmony, simplicity, and fun in complex problems characterizes physicists. I’m honored to carry this legacy outside of the field and have my mind and spirit ready to explore unvisited lands in science and engineering.

Fig. 3: Peeking above my 5th academic ancestor in the Academic Family Tree.

So I leave this post after selecting an academic ancestor whose interests exemplify how I view scientific research now: as an activity which frees our minds, no matter the field. This ancestor is the great polymath Gauss, at a distance of 10 in my academic tree (see Fig. 3).