Lisa Randall
Lisa Randall
Lisa Randallis an American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University. Her research includes elementary particles and fundamental forces and she has developed and studied a wide variety of models, the most recent involving extra dimensions of space. She has advanced the understanding and testing of the Standard Model, supersymmetry, possible solutions to the hierarchy problem concerning the relative weakness...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth18 June 1962
CountryUnited States of America
Scientific experiments are expensive, and people are entitled to know about them if they want to. I think it is very difficult to convey ideas.
I grew up in New York City. I went to museums so much as a kid, and I guess I didn't realize how much it affected me.
There can sometimes be this fear among laypeople: 'I don't understand everything in science perfectly, so I just can't say anything about it.' I think it's good to know that we scientists are also confused some of the time.
There could be more to the universe than the three dimensions we are familiar with. They are hidden from us in some way, perhaps because they're tiny or warped. But even if they're invisible, they could affect what we actually observe in the universe.
There could be a vestige of extra dimensions hidden in your kitchen cabinet.
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions.
I started out working on supersymmetry. The theory predicts that for every particle we know about, there will be an additional particle.
The scientist is also a composer... You could think of science as discovering one particular thing - a supernova or whatever. You could also think of it as discovering this whole new way of seeing the world.
The thing I will say is that probably culturally, women are treated differently, which means, I think, you're criticized more, you have to listen a little bit more, you have to justify yourself.
The standard model of particle physics describes forces and particles very well, but when you throw gravity into the equation, it all falls apart. You have to fudge the figures to make it work.
The stuff we're really famous for was really lucky in a way.
Most physicists like myself won't believe the result until every possible caveat has been investigated and/or the result is confirmed elsewhere.
What I do is very theoretical. It won't necessarily have implications for anything anyone is doing tomorrow, yet you know that there's a sense of progress in science, and as we understand more, it just turns out that, somehow, the world evolves with us.
When I was in school, I liked math because all the problems had answers. Everything else seemed very subjective.