Oct 03 2024 30 mins
In the latest episode of Living Proof, Dan Aspel speaks to Professors Lionel Mason (Oxford) and Maciej Dunajski (Cambridge) of the Twistor Theory programme (https://www.newton.ac.uk/event/twt). Over the 30 minutes, they share their experiences of the scale and challenges of this far-reaching topic that - amongst other things - aims to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics.
00:00 - Introduction
00:42 - Welcome
01:48 - “I have been excited about this programme for 40 years”, introducing the topic
05:18 - Successes of the programme, the attendance of Roger Penrose
06:30 - Connecting Twistor Theory with the Kennedy assassination, a short history of the field
10:28 - The many languages of mathematics
13:45 - Periods of acceleration within the field, “… the 70s must have been truly exciting”, the collaboration between Penrose and Michael Atiyah
17:50 - “Roger makes no secret of the fact that he disapproved of String Theory”
19:48 - What applications can one expect from Twistor Theory?
27:14 - Personal highlights of the month-long programme, celebrating 30 years of collaboration