Jim Al-Khalili: A Scientific Perspective

First and foremost, I am a scientist. But it depends on who I’m talking to. I am an academic professor of physics. But I am also an author and broadcaster.

I wasn’t a geeky kid. Until I went to University I was more interested in girls, football and pop music than science.

The new book by my American pal and fellow theoretical physicist, Sean Carroll. It’s called Something Deeply Hidden and is a popular science book on the nature of quantum reality. Although I have read, and written, many books on quantum physics, I know Sean is a proponent of what is known as the ‘many worlds’ interpretation, which advocates the idea that ours is just one of possibly an infinite number of parallel realities. I am reading to see if he can finally persuade me that it is correct.

The Boy’s Companion by Bertie Webster Smith. I got it for Christmas when I was 13. It contained a chapter on every possible hobby: football, fishing, stamp and rock collecting. I feel nostalgic just thinking about it.

It was probably the day I first walked into a library. This would have been sometime in 1972, when I was nine. It was in the British Council building in Baghdad. Suddenly, there were all these books I could borrow and read.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I bought it at Heathrow Airport a few weeks ago on my way to Dubrovnik for a family holiday – the perfect novel to read by the pool.

See above.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter which won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. It’s a remarkable book bringing together lots of ideas in philosophy, mathematics and art. I read it as a student and it help convince me that full-time contemplation of the profound nature of the Universe would be what I would spend my life doing.

I have a set of physics school textbooks that were originally in Russian but translated into Arabic (and still have some Russian terms in them). They were gifted to me when I was in my early teens – no idea who from. They are full of wonderful diagrams.

Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution by Lee Smolin.

In my career? I guess being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the oldest and most prestigious scientific academy in the world and I now have my named signed in a book along with Newton and Darwin and Einstein. But in life in general? Then far, far outweighing any silly science club, would be my part in helping raise two wonderful children, now outstanding adults.

Can it be one of my own books? Ha! OK, maybe that’s not what you meant. So, maybe The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose. It is a thousand-page door-stopper and full of tough, profound physics.

That’s a tough one. On reflection, I’d say: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. I remember feeling that, for the first time, I might be able to understand the nature of human consciousness and free will from a logical, reductionist, scientific perspective.

Of course. Apart from all the obvious classics that every human should read, I would add most of the books of Arthur C Clark, Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K Dick – oh, and Stephen King, of course.

Too many to list. So much to read, so little time.