The Noble Science

Physics is amongst the hardest of the hard sciences - a discipline which seeks to explain how the contents of the universe respond to forces, interact with one another, shape the world around them and even came to be, through detailed mathematical and quantitative analysis. Stereotypical physicists in fiction have a reputation for seeing the world differently to others, and even for struggling to interact with more ‘normal’ human beings. Many scientists have appeared in fiction only in the context of their inventions, with the characters themselves being treated as incidental to the plot. Where physicists appear in a professional context it’s often in dramatic situations such as the Manhattan Project (with its wide-sweeping consequences and moral implications, as I’ve discussed previously) or other military work. Alternatively, physicists have appeared as adventurous team members such as Stargate SG-1’s Sam Carter or, like Quantum Leap’s Sam Beckett or The Time Tunnel's Doug Phillips and Tony Newman, launching themselves on missions far removed from the more rarefied atmosphere of academic research.

However science fiction, of all genres, also provides avenues to explore scientist characters, and physicists in particular, for their own sake. Indeed, at least one science fiction example refers to the field as The Noble Science, and a number of cases exist where the narrative focus is on the research and the people doing it rather than solely on its outcomes. So what can science fiction tell us about the physicists who actually do physics?

A sympathetic and nuanced depiction of an active research physicist can be found in Ursula K Le Guin’s 1974 novel The Dispossessed. This traced the life and career of Shevek, a theoretical physicist from the planet Anarres. In chapters which alternate between Shevek’s present and his past, Le Guin plays with the reader’s expectations. The first appearances of the character are of an outcast, branded traitor by his own people, and as an impatient, selfish and socially-awkward toddler. As the story develops, the representation becomes more subtle. Young Shevek develops a fascination with physics, but finds a tight-knit group of other gifted youngsters he can talk to. Travelling to the capital city, he initially thrives in a research environment, but finds himself increasingly isolated. When his innovative and insightful research is stifled or stolen by a jealous senior researcher, he turns instead to socially necessary work, spending years on hard manual labour before returning to research determined to break social conventions, shun the tightly-controlled publication routes open to him and create his own press. This is what leads him to take the unforgivable step of leaving Anarres for its sister planet Urras - where physics is lauded as The Noble Science. His journey of discovery on Urras forms the alternate chapters which give context to and build upon the themes of earlier episodes in his biography.

The story of jealous senior researchers, and of governments controlling information and intending to keep the truth for their own use, is familiar from other works. What makes The Dispossessed distinctive, though, is the way it seats serious and academic physics research firmly in its social and political context. In the narrative, harsh and barely-habitable Anarres was settled by political dissidents from the much lusher and more bountiful Urras centuries before. The resulting purely-socialist and communal society is very different from either the capitalist nation of Urras which hosts Shevek's visit, or those which represent politicised Communism akin to that found in our own Soviet Union. His unshakeable commitment to the idea that all people should be equal (independent of race, gender or class), should work for a common good, and should be entitled to absolute individual freedom, without government or commercial pressures informs both how Shevek chooses to communicate his work and his ability to step outside the physics paradigms that shapes his world. The climax of his research is the creation of a unifying theory that will permit instantaneous communication across interstellar distances, but it is forged from unconventional as well as orthodox physics paradigms (represented in the book by long-dismissed 'simultaneity' as opposed to accepted 'sequentist' theory). Shevek finds that his sense of personal freedom enables him to create a synthesis and break the circle that has constrained previous work, and so find the General Temporal Theory.

In its advocacy of anarchy and social restructuring, and its pondering on the intersections between self-identity as a scientist and self-identity as a family member and part of society, The Dispossessed is as much a work of philosophy as of physics. In this respect, Le Guin was responding to the growing role of philosophical discussions in theoretical physics of her time - particularly in particle physics and in cosmology. Many theoretical physicists were questioning the morality and application of their work, as well as more fundamental questions regarding the nature of reality. Indeed, Le Guin described having used Manhattan Project physicist Robert Oppenheimer as a model for Shevek in her essay. Oppenheimer had a similar mixture of self-reflection, physics genius and charismatic influence over others to Shevek himself. As Le Guin described it, her writing was often inspired by vivid images of such interesting characters:

I saw the face more clearly than usual, a thin face, large clear eyes, and large ears - these, I think, may have come from a childhood memory of Robert Oppenheimer as a young man. But more vivid than any visual detail was the personality, which was attractive - attractive, I mean, as a flame to a moth.
Science Fiction and Mrs Brown (essay, 1974), reprinted in The Language of the Night (anthology, 1979).

A more down to Earth story is Fusion, by Milton A Rothman, which appeared in the anthology Stellar 1 (ed. Judy-Lynn del Rey, 1974). In this story, a particle physics researcher, Russell Hertzberg, is one of a number looking to test their theories on a new tokamak - the Toroidal Device 3 - which is designed to create the high temperature plasmas and sustain them for the long timescales necessary for sustained fusion. However Hertzberg’s group is just one of a number of competing research teams all of whom want time on the new device to test their ideas. He has to fight both technical problems and internal politics in the organisation to see his vision for fusion realised.

The story puts a lot of emphasis on the technical problems and the details of how fusion might work in practice, as well as the rivalry with a team more favoured by the project director. It reads as knowledgeable - or even somewhat bitter at times - and indeed it is. Rothman was a nuclear physicist working at Princeton and there’s a postscript from the author which notes that “... this story is based - rather loosely - on events that have happened. And some of them happened to me.” [1].

In this regard, while the events in the story are technically science fiction, it draws heavily on a straightforward description of life in a research organisation and comes across as autobiographical (even if the climax of the story differs from that of the life on which it was based.

An interesting question which has been probed by science fiction is whether individual physicist geniuses are essential for the progression of the science. Second Einstein, by C D Renmore, appeared in Science Fiction Monthly in 1976. Its main character is a theoretical physicist whose thesis has been rejected by a senior researcher. The latter cannot accept the idea that scientific discovery has inevitable momentum and may be held back by stand-out geniuses, rather than accelerated by it. The student, Lionel White's, Creative Correlation Hypothesis states that, given that the number of people working in physics grows exponentially, and the equipment, results, and tools to interpret them are constantly developing, on a statistical basis discoveries must be made at a rate virtually independent of their precise discoverers.

After being rejected by senior academic Haynes, and taking an astronomical observatory technician’s role in order to support himself while gaining quiet thinking time, the never-qualified physicist White, spends five years in the academic wilderness before (in a somewhat unlikely coincidence) being picked up by a group of xenophobic aliens who have picked up radio signals from Earth are determined to keep humanity planet-bound (embodying the Dark Forest Hypothesis). When the aliens have probed White and interrogated his knowledge of the sciences, he is sent back in time to assassinate Newton and Einstein… and wakes to find that as a result Earth has progressed further in science, has overturned the domination of the aliens, and that he is himself (somewhat ironically) regarded as a colossal genius of theoretical physics.

While this story does not focus on the rigour of academic physics, and it is unlikely, certainly now and perhaps even in the 1970s, that a single individual would be permitted to block a PhD thesis from acceptance and publication, it nonetheless makes the interesting point that, while progress may be either made or hindered by individuals, physics as a whole advances by building on the body of previous work.

The role of individuals - and their ability to block, hinder or promote the work of others - is also a theme in Isaac Asimov’s 1972 novel The Gods Themselves. This story follows a series of characters, from the discovery of a strange physical effect yielding energy through to the realisation that it threatens the universe. The Pump is a process by which tungsten is transformed into an isotope of plutonium which does not form naturally in our universe, and decays back to tungsten with a release of energy. Rather than a natural process, this is actually occurring as the result of conscious activity by sentient beings in two different universes - our own, and one with a different constant for the strong nuclear force. However, in exchanging the material between universes, generating energy in both, the strong force parameters are becoming blended, with possibly disastrous consequences for matter everywhere.

A large part of the first section of the book focuses on a physicist, Peter Lamont, who is writing a history of the pump and its serendipitous discovery by Frederick Hallam. However, as soon as he suggests that this isn’t a natural process, and still more questions Hallam’s status as the sole authority on it, Lamont finds that Hallam is using his influence to block publication and circulation of his ideas. Indeed, Lamont is forced to go directly to a powerful politician, who explains the reality of the academic hierarchy, self-interested humanity and the difficulty of changing the status quo to him:

“Sir, the structure I have built explains several things that are left doubtful in the accepted view.”

“Well then, your colleagues ought to accept your modification and in that case you would scarcely have come to me, I imagine.”

“Sir, my colleagues will not believe. Their self-interest stands in their way.”

“As your self-interest stands in the way of your believing you may be wrong.… Young man, my powers, on paper, are enormous, but I can only succeed when the public is willing to let me. ” (pg 49, 1973 Granada paperback edition).

Despite this dismissal, Lamont persists in his efforts. It becomes clear that Hallam has previously undermined the career of Denison, another former colleague who has left physics entirely to become an entrepreneur instead. In the final section of the book, however, Denison taps into a third parallel universe with different force laws again, and eventually is able to publically ruin Hallam.

The book’s main theme is the stupidity of prioritising personal fame and short term advantage over a potentially existential threat against humanity. It is also well known for a well-realised and written picture of an utterly alien intelligent life (rare in Asimov’s writing). However the role of research physics in the story, and the difficulty of securing recognition for heterodox views, against opposition from those with vested interests in orthodoxy, is also a prominent thread running through the narrative.

A professional astronomer’s take on the life and work of a physicist as an outsider can be found in An Easy Little Problem by Philip Latham (short story, in Marvel Science Fiction, Aug 1951). Latham was a pseudonym for Robert S Richardson - an astronomer who wrote popular science articles in the science fiction press, as well as scientific research. Indeed, the story is accompanied by footnotes, which both contextualise it in research discoveries of the late 1940s and projects those into the future.

In this story, the main character, Driscoll is a lecturer in a small community college where he teaches physics and mathematics. Driscoll’s promising research career (and PhD studies) had been cut short when his mentor, Brodeheim, fell prey to alcoholism and was dismissed from his work on the origin of cosmic rays. Both men remained dilettantes in the field despite no longer being research professionals:

He and Brodeheim were going to show the world that scientists, other than those in the great government laboratories with every technical resource instantly available to them — could still do valuable research.

The story focuses on Driscoll’s attempts to finally solve the problem of cosmic rays after his old mentor dies suddenly, leaving him a cryptic clue. After a visit to the government’s chief scientist, and to researchers at Mount Palomar, it becomes clear that the entire edifice of the mainstream body of research and investment had been founded on a misconception.

The story is interesting in that it contrasts the academic researcher with the maverick, socially-unacceptable independent researcher, and also highlights the role that a powerful academic supervisor can have in the success - or failure - of a research career. It also makes the point that throwing money at a problem will not always resolve it. However it’s still notable that these were not autodidact (i.e. self-taught) physicists - a robust and substantial formal training was still necessary to avoid the basic pitfalls and acquire the mathematical insights necessary for progress.

It’s not surprising that physicist authors are often the most likely to write novels which detail the life and work of physicists. Gregory Benford is a plasma scientist and theoretical physicist. He was also the son-in-law of a prominent physicist member of the Manhattan Project. The personal insight this gave is apparent in his alternate-history novel The Berlin Project (2017), which followed physicist characters on an alternate path towards nuclear weaponry during World War II. However he also wrote of scientists in more normal, academic circumstances. A strong example of this is Benford’s 1980 novel Timescape, which actually features not just one but two groups of academic physicists.

In 1998, John Renfrew and Greg Markham at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory are living in a world of ecological collapse and resource depletion. They experiment with tachyons - faster than light particles - and hope to send a message to the past in order to avert the current global disaster. In the California of 1962, another team led by Gordon Bernstein, is working on measuring the resonance of iridium atoms - the perfect receiver for a morse code signal sent back in time. These two epochs were equidistant in time when the book was published, but capture very different worlds.

Both groups of physicists encounter the regular frustrations of academic physics: misbehaving equipment, sceptical superiors, competition for resources, the need to support and mentor struggling research students, and the constant never-ending quest to secure research funding. The latter is particularly acute in the more desperate and resource-poor conditions of the ecological disaster. As Peterson, a science administrator who has been drawn into the project, notes:

“The wrong turning came when we started going for the socially relevant research in the first place. We accepted the idea that science was like other areas, where you make a product and the whole thing can be run from the top down.”

“Well, surely it can,” Laura said. “If the right people are at the top - ”

“There are no right people,” he said with energy. “That’s what I’m just now learning. See, we went to the senior scientists and asked them to pick the most promising fields. Then we supported those and cut the rest, to ‘focus our efforts.’ But the real diversity in science comes from below, not from innovative managers above. We narrowed the compass of science until nobody saw anything but the approved problems, the conventional wisdom. To save money, we stifled imagination and verve.” (pg 242)

 This sentiment feels as real and relevant now as it likely did when Benford wrote it, or even more so, despite the delay in the ecocide he envisaged.

Benford writes about both the University of California and the Cavendish in Cambridge with familiarity and confidence (although an acknowledgement notes the role of his English, Cantabrigian sister-in-law in assisting with that). His physicists have very different class and social backgrounds and home lives, but their concentration and attention clearly focuses on their research labs, and in this sense, they show a lot of similarity in their outlook and behaviour. The scientists in this story seem remarkably affluent by modern standards (a current academic salary would not support the lifestyles seen here, although it probably did in the 1970s). Benford’s physics is also a very gendered one - even in his vision of the Cav of 1998 (actually while I was an undergraduate there, in fact!), women are relegated to wife and girlfriend status. The few female scientists mentioned are either passed over quickly as background colour or held up as an exception. The one female cosmologist who gets to speak for herself is outed as bisexual (and thus outside the contemporary norms for her gender) within a couple of pages of her first appearance.

Perhaps inevitably, most of the examples considered above place physicists in the context of modern, Western research culture. Some interesting counter examples can be found in the work of Cixin Liu. The foundations of Liu’s literature is deep in a Chinese cultural history and perspective. A number of his narratives feature research scientists - often physicists and astrophysicists - as principle characters. In each case, the scientist’s decisions are shaped at least as much by social and political pressures as by the academic discipline in which they are embedded.

Key examples can be found in Liu’s best known work, The Three Body Problem (novel, 2006; English translation by Ken Liu, 2014). A key role in the novel is played by astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, whose parents, daughter and son-in-law are (or, in most cases, were) all physicists. Academia and scientific rigour provided no protection for Ye’s father, who was killed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, or for other members of her family. Disenchanted, as a young woman she sends a signal to a nearby planet - precipitating a series of events in which Earth is threatened by Trisolaris (a planet which orbits the triple-star system of alpha, beta and proxima Centauri). The Three Body Problem and its sequels follow a range of individuals, including Ye and nanophysicist Wang Miao, as they come to understand the threat posed by Trisolaris and deal with their own growing understanding both of the wider universe and the political problems in which they become enmeshed.

One of the minor characters of the Three Body Problem, Ye’s son-in-law Ding Yi, appeared in Liu’s earlier novel Ball Lightning (2004; English translation by Joel Martinsen, 2018) which also hinges on questions of theoretical physics - although this time controlled manipulation of electromagnetic fields, in the context of its weaponisation by the military. Most of the principal cast of the novel are research physicists, and while the bulk of the book focuses on the discovery and its applications, the first section is an interesting biographical excursion into the training and research career of the book’s narrator, Chen, an atmospheric physicist driven by childhood trauma. Liu’s physicists (and indeed military officers) follow many of the stereotypes of physicists - obsessive, often amoral and prioritising their research over any personal life. Their perspective can be summarised by the advice of Ding Yi in Ball Lightning:

“From a physics perspective, the form of matter movement known as life has no more meaning than any other movement of matter. You can’t find any new physical laws in life, so from my standpoint, the death of a person and the melting of an ice cube are essentially the same thing. Dr Chen, you tend to overthink things. You should learn to look at life from the perspective of the ultimate law of the universe. You’ll feel better if you do.”

Despite this, Liu’s physicists do an interesting job of balancing their personal and research goals with social goals, authoritarian oversight and patriotic duty. While the main cast are often driven, they move through wider academic circles and interact with colleagues and friends. As such they provide an interesting window into the roles and lives of physicists in a very different milieu to that seen in western science fiction.

The relatively small number of examples of stories focused on working physicists in science fiction (as opposed to their discoveries, or applications) is perhaps unsurprising. While research has its moments of excitement and insight, many of its days are as much a daily grind as any other career. The skill of the writers discussed here in bringing out the everyday challenges of research, as well as its intrinsic (albeit rather obscure) excitement, reflects their own experience. Benford, Latham and Rothman were certainly professional scientists. Asimov had extensive scientific training as well as an ongoing dialogue with the scientific community. Renmore is more obscure (Second Einstein was his only published short story, and the name is likely a pseudonym) but he wrote two non-fiction science articles for Science Fiction Monthly, and seems to be the same individual who published the popular science book Silicon Chips and You in 1980. Such popular science writing suggests a high level of scientific training or knowledge. Liu was also a computer engineer, and his technical knowledge shows in his writing. The outlier here is Ursula K Le Guin who was primarily a novelist, without detailed scientific training, although from an academic background in the humanities

In this regard it’s interesting that Le Guin’s Shevek is amongst the most well-developed of the physicist characters discussed here. Indeed, Le Guin’s essay Science Fiction and Mrs Brown describes how she set out to form a well-rounded and realistic character, who proved to be a physicist, rather than the reverse. Nonetheless, the other examples here are generally sympathetic representations of physicists without glossing over some of their more stereotypical defects. Characters such as Shevek, or Renfrew and Markham in Timescape are obsessive, seeing the world through a lens of mathematics and the needs of their work. Their partners and home lives are often neglected - but nonetheless exist. These are men (almost inevitably) with sexual partners, real relationships and genuine interests outside of their research, even if those often end up taking a back seat to their driving interest in physics problems.

Importantly they are also normal people - not the towering geniuses that fiction sometimes imagines. This is most clearly articulated in Second Einstein, where a failed PhD student in the academic wilderness is promoted to genius status, simultaneously demonstrating the premise that progress in scientific research is usually cumulative rather than individual. In all of the other fiction mentioned here, while a great discovery may be made, it is inevitably the result of hard work, robust theory, serendipity and cooperation with colleagues, rather than a ‘eureka!’ moment. In this respect they are demonstrating the quotation attributed to the proto-physicist Isaac Newton (although long predating his time): “if I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

In being normal people, from a range of cultural backgrounds, the academic physicists discussed here also demonstrate the truism that science is never entirely divorced from its social and political context - and indeed argue that it should not be. Le Guin’s Shevek mat be working on a paradigm-changing physics principle, but he is first and foremost a radical social and political reformer, whose character and goals are entirely shaped by his cultural upbringing. Liu’s Ye Wenjie is equally politically active, and - like Le Guin’s - Liu’s writing does not shy away from visceral engagement with the realities of hardship or the impact that upbringing and culture has on the scientific outlook of a physicist. In The Gods Themselves, Asimov’s Lamont has to become politically aware and become an iconoclast in order to bring his work to fruition. Benford’s scientists too are embedded in the society in which they live. In Timescape’s 1998, Renfrew and Markham are struggling against disaster and funding limitations while upholding the values and lifestyles which they (and their partners) expect. In 1962, Bernsten lives in a safer world but is nonetheless struggling to reconcile his East Coast Jewish upbringing with his West Coast liberal environment. These struggles are manifest in their approach to their research and events in their personal lives feed directly into the moments of insight which allow their scientific work to progress.

The interaction between science and society is demonstrated in other ways. These stories demonstrate that a genuinely correct idea will ultimately win recognition and change paradigms, where evidence exists for it. However in many of the narratives discussed here, a vital component of the learning curve of the physicists concerned requires them to first recognise and then overcome vested interests within their own field. The senior scientist, with reputation made by earlier work, attempting to block novel insights which conflict with orthodoxy is a repeated theme. In some cases, as in the instance of Hallam in The Gods Themselves or Shevek’s supervisor Sabul in The Dispossessed , this is due to blatant and self-aware prioritisation of self-interest. In other cases, as in Bernstein’s senior Lakin in Timescape, supervisor Haynes in Second Einstein, or the lab administrator in Rothman’s Fusion, the senior academic may genuinely and strongly believe in their academic position and have the integrity of physics as a whole at heart.

Either way, these characters are acting as gatekeepers rather than mentors. They make it clear that physicists are as incapable of truly open-minded, detached reason as any other human being, and that societal pressures - jealousy, reputation, funding and inability to break the conditioning of a field - are tangible even within the halls of academia. This is undeniably true, and will remain so as long as physicists remain human. Access to grant funding and publication in high-profile journals is often influenced by an individual’s reputation or mentoring. An ongoing goal of reform and professional practice discussions in the field of physics is nonetheless to recognise and remove the role of gatekeepers insofar as possible and ensure that publication is based primarily on the intrinsic rigour of the research. This includes a move towards anonymised, double-blind peer review in some cases, such as allocation of telescope time. Recognising the problem is not the same as solving it, but it’s tempting to hope that some of the circumstances described in the fiction of the mid-twentieth century would not be permitted to arise today.

One common aspect that all these narratives makes clear is the importance of clarity in science communication. Every physicist in these stories has to articulate their insights, often into complex theoretical physics, to others - whether to family, friends, funders, politicians, media or simply colleagues with slightly different background knowledge. They do so through analogy, through clear and concise description and by articulating the interpretations and consequences of their mathematics. To some extent this is an artefact of the medium. Science fiction is written by a non-expert audience, and where it leans on hard scientific facts these must be explained to readers. However, by demonstrating the importance of communication with non-experts even within the routine work of academic research, they nonetheless hit on a fundamental truth: physics is a field in which clarity of expression is as important as clarity of thought.

Outreach and science communication is an essential aspect of the remit of virtually all physics departments, and is recognised as such for the role it has both in drawing new scientists into the field and in contributing to the scientific literacy of an increasingly science-dependent population. As with any other field of competence, not every individual is a gifted science communicator - any more than every individual can be a gifted theorist. As the narratives here show, however, the stereotype of a typical physicist as a tongue-tied and incomprehensible loner must nonetheless be laid firmly to rest.

As we’ve seen, physicists in science fiction must be creative as well as logical, communicators as well as calculators, socially and politically aware as well as capable of entering worlds of pure theory. They live and love in the real world, and they have the capacity to change it, or to hinder that change. They are neither wholly motivated by self-interest, nor wholly motivated by the common good. They are as human as anyone around them.

Physicists in the real world are no different.