An Interview with Mete Atature

I am a professor of physics. I teach and I conduct research in physics. My speciality is on quantum physics particularly on how light and matter interact in the regime where neither can be understood by our classical everyday notions. I also do science communication hen I can find the time.

My work and my life are intertwined, so I find myself working many hours even when I think I am not. Science, and in particular a new idea, does not wait for the working hours to inspire you, so it is hard to say when I am NOT working. A typical day would be that I wake up around 7 and head to the department to talk to my research team about various developments in the laboratory. I also teach and attend departmental meetings during the day. The rest of the time is thinking, discussing, reading and writing. What I can do without is replying to emails, this is becoming a real obstacle to creative thinking. Evening time can be books, movies, concerts…or some quality time for work!

I am about to finish a graphic novel trilogy (X’ed Out, The Hive, Sugar Skull) by Charles Burns. I do enjoy graphic novels and I liked Charles Burns’ style already in Black Hole. This trilogy zooms back and forth between reality and I find myself preoccupied with the way the main character is unfolding. I am eager to find out how it all comes together – or maybe it won’t!

I can’t remember the very first book, but I do remember The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski, which had quite an impact as a kid. I found out later that it was originally TV series and then turned into a book. It had quite a serious tone, every time I read a part of it, it felt like I was also listening to the music in the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Richard Strauss – Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

Bookmarker, that doesn’t mean I will not take notes all over the margins though! Or stuff a book in my back pocket so I have it available whenever the opportunity arises.

I remember reading books ever since I figured out how to read but there is one summer holiday where my mum would take me to a small book store nearby every Thursday to buy an abridged version of a literary classic, like those of Jules Verne, Jack London and H. G. Wells. I would have exactly one week to finish it before we pick the next one! This might sound somewhat formulaic, but it allowed me to embrace reading as an integral part of my life.

Oh yes, the chaos years! I knew everything back then and fought everything too! I think I would try to convince my 16-year-old self to read more about views other than those aligned with mine…to get a better understanding of why things are the way they are and how they can actually be changed – I expect he would not like it in the first instance! This is also the time I fell in love with physics, so I would probably try to get my younger self to understand how science is not separate from society.

Depends on how easily readable the book is and how much it has drawn me in it! Some books require that you sit up proper, get a cup of tea and make sure your phone is off. Others I might carry in my back pocket and read at every opportunity – bus, train, or at a street corner waiting for someone. In general, I also don’t mind some background noise, like you might get in a coffee shop, as long as the neighbouring conversation is not interesting!

I assume you mean beyond the topical training books. Yes, indeed this is probably one weak point of the sciences, that we start right away on the technical training, but the “what does it all mean?” part comes much later in life. I would star this in parallel, so the younger people of science get to experience the history and the philosophy of science as well. This way they are not shocked later when they find out that science is not just a collection of absolute facts, but rather an exploratory dance into the unknown with hardly any enough tools of what we know today. On that note, I would list The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge by A. Flexner as an impactful nugget, The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin and The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Feynman, Leighton and Sands.

Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, and Aziz Nesin for sure. All these authors have used their stories to critique various aspects of society from a broader perspective. They used storytelling to challenge our assumptions we forget to question. The fifth seat would be some outrageous personality and has multiple candidates, like William S. Burroughs and Ernest Hemingway, but I would probably invite David Sedaris for some controllable wit!

The last book I bought is Circe by Madeline Miller. I like her approach to prose and mythology, and I studied literature around Greek mythology in College and loved it. I have not read Circe yet, but I am looking forward to it!

I am a slow reader, I tend to take my time to imagine and visualise as I read. After a particularly descriptive section about a place, I might take some time to develop the image in my mind and let the moment develop before reading on. A book lets you control the pace ad to dream up a whole new universe. You can’t get that by pausing a movie, reading makes you an active participant of the story.

Ah, a hard question! Life and work keep me too busy to squeeze in many books in 6 months, but perhaps among the few I have managed to read in the last 6 months, I would list Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. I like her style a lot.

The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin. I was drawn into it so much, I was trying to see the world through the mindset of Ged. It was an unexpected way of self-reflection and contemplation. I would be another Ged somewhere in the Earthsea…and there must be others!

Hah! Well, I think a good book of this type could be Cosmos by Carl Sagan. This is a fantastic read for anyone of any educational background to understand and appreciate that science is not a collection of dry facts and laws but contains passion to understand and make sense of it all. The universe possesses beauty at many layers in its own way and science is a means to notice this.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! by Richard Feynman. His approach to life and his science made me think that science is not for a particular stereotype and any kid with a genuine interest in figuring things out could be a scientist and even a good one too!

I realise I only mentioned prose, but I am also quite into poetry. I would add as an addition to a list, if you like poetry, The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke of course. I recommend reading his poems many times throughout one’s adult life…they evolve!

Inferior by Angela Saini. It is about gender inequality in sciences as well as how we perceive science and its history. Understanding all this is the starting point to overcome this problem. A prolific science communicator and diversity champion, Jess Wade, started a recent campaign to have this book in every school library in the UK. I now have this book and I will read it next (and so should everyone!)