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
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.
Sometimes models are surprisingly smart.
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 stuff we're really famous for was really lucky in a way.
I started out working on supersymmetry. The theory predicts that for every particle we know about, there will be an additional particle.
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.
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.
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions.
We live in a world where there are many risks, and it's high time we start taking seriously which ones we should be worried about.
We have this very clean picture of science, you know, these well-established rules with which we make predictions. But when you're really doing science, when you're doing research, you're at the edge of what we know.
I don't think we have reached a point where art really translates into science. Perhaps for some people, having good visuals can help translate into science.
For me, the most absorbing films are those that address big questions and real ideas but embody them in small examples that we can appreciate and comprehend.
Most physicists like myself won't believe the result until every possible caveat has been investigated and/or the result is confirmed elsewhere.
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.