[MUSIC PLAYING]
RICHARD: Hi, welcome
to Talks at Google
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And today, I'm delighted to
introduce a two-for-one topic.
First is Abraham
Flexner, who's a person
that I think we should
all know better,
the first director of the
Institute at Princeton
and one of the people
responsible for bringing
Albert Einstein to this country,
among many other things.
Very famous in his time--
front-page obituary in
"The New York Times"--
and we seem to have forgotten
about him, a fascinating person
and then the author of the
original classic essay.
And here to comment and expand
on that, Robbert Dijkgraaf,
the current director of
the Institute of Advanced
studies at Princeton, certainly
an accomplished scientist
in his own right,
director and Leon Levy
Professor at the Institute since
2012, a mathematical physicist
well known for string
theory, and also
the advancement of
scientific education.
And so he's a past president of
the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences,
in that capacity,
an adviser to the
Dutch government,
advocate for the
science and the arts.
He has received the
Spinoza prize, the highest
scientific award
in the Netherlands,
and has been named a
knight of the order
the Netherlands Lion, a
member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and the
American Philosophical Society.
So a heartfelt welcome, Robbert.
ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF:
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Richard,
and a great pleasure
to talk here about
a very small book.
So it'll take you, I think,
only an hour to read,
but I think it's a small
book on a very large topic--
namely, the role that basic
research plays in our lives,
and in some sense,
some deeper themes
like curiosity and imagination.
It's great to be a co-author
with Abraham Flexner,
who indeed needs--
I think, in some sense, we
have to resurrect his legacy.
And indeed, he was famous
for bringing Albert Einstein
to the Institute.
So when this book
came out, I thought
it would be a good idea
to see whether we can have
a blurb from Einstein
about the book,
because he must have
known Flexner well.
So I was envisioning Einstein,
I really recommend that book.
I think it was the
perfect occasion to do so.
So then I looked in the
"Ultimate Quotable Einstein,"
which has almost 600 pages
of Einstein quotations
on everything, if there
was anything about Flexner.
There was one quotation, and it
said, "one of my few enemies."
So that was my proposal
to have on the book,
but we didn't go there.
Flexner wrote his
essay, "The Usefulness
of Useless Knowledge," which
really is a catching title.
He worked on it for many years--
in fact, almost two decades.
It was finally published
in October 1939
in "Harper's" magazine.
And it's interesting
just to see what
was relevant in October '39.
You see one of the
issues here-- well,
there was an article about
conscience in wartime.
But there was also an
equally important article
on why can't we have
perfect teeth or old people
arising natural problem.
So the world was in
crisis, but in some sense,
it's still remarkable
that he was writing
about the use of basic
research, the usefulness
of basic research, in that time.
And in this book, actually,
I started the book
by explaining that
'39 was special too
because it was actually the
year when the World Fair came
to New York.
And the theme was the
world of tomorrow.
In fact, it returned in
1964, but it was in Queens.
And it really was a
way where many people
could meet new technology.
For instance, the first
television broadcast was there.
At that point, there
were 200 television sets.
And the first live broadcast
was the opening speech
of President Roosevelt. The
dishwasher, the fax machine--
they were all introduced
to the American audience
for the first time.
On the other hand, there were
things of days long past--
for instance, kind of a beauty
pageant of steam engines.
And another thing, the
first robot was introduced.
His name was Elektro.
He could smoke a cigarette.
And he had a little
robot dog, Sparky,
that he could play with.
And here we see him performing.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Elektro, come here.
And here he comes, ladies
and gentlemen, walking up
to greet you under
his own power.
[END PLAYBACK]
ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF:
Not that impressive,
but I think it was
actually the voice was
by playing gramophone records.
So this was 1939 technology.
But actually, it was the
second opening speech,
and that was by Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein decided
to talk about cosmic rays.
And it has been described
as a comedy of error
because the trick was that
cosmic rays, particles coming
from the universe, were
captured in Hayden Planetarium
in Manhattan, then sent by
telephone, whatever that meant,
to the fairgrounds.
And when the 10th
cosmic ray was captured,
a big switch was thrown,
and then the fuse blew.
And the whole room
turned pitch dark.
And "The New York Times"
did a report the next day
that the audience left
this kind of exposition
about science to go to
something they could applaud.
So it was kind of
not a great success.
But I think it's
amazing because Einstein
was talking about the
world of tomorrow,
but he didn't
mention two topics.
He didn't mention nuclear
power, nuclear energy,
and he didn't mention computers.
And both of them actually
were, at that point,
really developed under his
own eyes in the Institute
for Advanced Study that was
set up by Abraham Flexner.
So the Institute was set
up and founded in 1930--
the first professors
came in 1933--
as kind of an island, a
paradise, for scholars,
as this "New York
Times Magazine" article
described, "seeking eternal
truth in a world of chaos."
But little did Einstein
or Flexner, who
was the first director,
realize that he was actually
creating these kind of
terrific developments
that would totally
change the world.
So only a few months later--
the opening of the World Fair
was, I think, in April.
In August '39, Einstein would
write his famous, letter
together with Leo Szilard,
asking President Roosevelt
to develop the atomic bomb.
And the Manhattan
Project basically
got underway in October '39.
Flexner does refer
obliquely to atomic power,
but he wasn't aware,
I think, that this
was kind of happening.
Another development
in the 1930s was
that Princeton became a
center for mathematical logic.
Church, von Neumann, Godel--
Turing, of course, was a
graduate student there.
And von Neumann
actually, working
on the abstract
computing machine,
proving mathematical theorems,
realized a few years later
that building an
electronic computer,
as you know very well, is much
more efficient using the von
Neumann architecture.
That is to say, allow the
computer to be programmable.
And he built actually
the first prototype
of that at the Institute.
Here you see him with
Oppenheimer in the integration
of the IAS machine.
It's quite a remarkable thing.
It has a 30 by 32 memory.
It was built from war surplus
material because of course,
you are not going
to spend real money
on building this computer.
And in fact, it was
a triple helix effort
because it was supported both
by philanthropy, by the war
effort, and by companies--
RCA, and later, IBM.
In fact, von Neumann not
only did huge simulations
of the hydrogen bomb.
He also used that computer to
do the first electronic weather
forecast, this and the other,
the machine in [INAUDIBLE].
So this is the first
computerized weather prediction
from January 1949.
I'd like to indicate it
took, these days, 48 hours
to predict tomorrow's weather.
So it was yesterday's
weather, actually,
which was pretty good on
the 30 by 32-bit machine.
And this Institute, which was
supposed to be as far removed
from reality as
possible, had-- you know,
here's the floor plan in 1948.
It had Einstein, being the
father of the peace movement.
It had von Neumann being
partly a role model for Dr.
Strangelove and building the
coldest of cold warriors,
and Oppenheimer, who was
kind of caught in between.
So it's the perfect
case to demonstrate
the title of Flexner, that
this kind of useless knowledge,
whether it's abstract
mathematical logic
or understanding the quantum
mechanics of an atomic nuclei,
could have incredible,
useful and also
dangerous consequences.
So who was Abraham
Flexner, this man
that we basically forgot about?
So he was born in a poor Jewish
family, immigrant family,
in 1866 in St. Louis.
He had nine siblings.
Three brothers
became pretty famous.
Simon Flexner was
the fourth director
of the Rockefeller Institute,
now Rockefeller University.
He was a medical doctor.
Bernard Flexner was very
seriously involved in politics.
And Abraham Flexner,
he was the one who
was able to go to Johns Hopkins
University at a very young age,
at age 17; graduated in
classics in two years;
went to start,
back to St. Louis--
became a high school
teacher; became notorious
because he was
failing, at one year,
his full class,
which actually made
the headlines in
the local newspaper;
started, when he was age
23, his own high school;
and then became famous
by this so-called
"Flexner Report," a
report he issued in 1910
that looked at all 155
medical schools in the US
and effectively led to the
closure of 120 of them.
Medical education at
the time was a disaster.
It was for profit.
It was an undergrad course.
Students would not
see any patients.
It was just basically a scam.
And he minces no words.
I think Chicago is described as
the plague spot of the country.
But even very established
medical schools,
like here at Harvard, they
essentially closed down
and started again.
Johns Hopkins, which was
the first modern research
university, was the only
one, one of the few, I think,
that was a lightning example.
And then Flexner started to
think about universities too.
And he became a very
influential thinker
about modern American
universities,
criticizing the
kind of shallowness,
the lack of research culture in
universities in 1920 and '30s.
Here he's, for instance,
describing Columbia and telling
that-- we can see that
Columbia, at that point,
offered courses in
practical poultry raising.
So this was the early '30s.
This was a time that people
were really looking for jobs.
And then came the
moment which really
made him move from an
abstract theoretical critique
to actually do something.
He was able to start the
Institute for Advanced Study
thanks to a wonderful grant
by the Bamberger family who
sold the department
store they had,
a Newark department
store, in 1929,
a few weeks before
the Wall Street crash.
So they were one of
the few philanthropies
that actually had cash.
And then actually, the institute
became quite influential
because geopolitics intervened.
Of course, 1933,
certainly there's
this wonderful group
of German scholars,
Jewish German scholars,
political refugees,
who were in search of a home.
And the Institute became
kind of an Ellis Island,
attracting scholars
from across the world.
Here you see some of the--
it's difficult to read.
Very small grants were
given to these great names.
So you could kind of buy, so
to say, Kurt Godel, I think,
for $1,200, or the greatest
logicians from the last 2,000
years, or Stan Ulam, the
Polish mathematician who
designed the hydrogen bomb.
I think he has an 800.
And the joke is that it was
something-- there were, again,
the Bamberger family that had
this department store was again
dealing in distressed
merchandise,
but [LAUGH] now scholars.
And Flexner here
writes, in 1939, I
think very perceptively, that
"50 years from now, historians
looking backward will, if we act
with courage and imagination,
report that during our time, the
central gravity of scholarship
moved across the Atlantic
to the United States."
And it's good to
remind ourselves
that the centers of scholarship
have moved across the globe
through the centuries.
He makes a perfect argument.
And as I said in
the introduction,
when he dies in 1959,
"The New York Times"
writes actually that "No
other American of his time
has contributed more to
the welfare of this country
and humanity in general."
So quite remarkable to see
that somebody with such a
large reputation is, in
some sense, forgotten.
And I think he should not be,
because the argument he makes
is timeless.
It's the argument
about the usefulness
of useless knowledge.
He spends a lot of time
arguing, for instance,
about electromagnetism,
Faraday and Maxwell.
There's this famous quote--
I'm not sure if it's true--
that when the British
chancellor of the Exchequer
visited Faraday's
lab and asked, what's
the scoop, Professor Faraday,
all this electricity, he said,
I've no idea.
But one day, Sir,
you will tax it.
And he was right.
You could say that these
days, electricity--
everything is governed
by electricity.
Another example,
quantum mechanics.
So if you think of the
birth of quantum mechanics--
so Max Planck famously said that
it was an act of desperation.
He really want to save
the laws of physics,
and he had to do
this crazy thing.
He was willing to make any offer
to the principles in physics
that I then held.
It was an esoteric subject
for just a handful of people.
And of course, these days, it's
estimated that 30% of GDP--
but it could be higher--
is in some sense
directly connected
to the results of
quantum mechanics,
whether it's integrated
circuits, nanomaterials,
lasers.
And of course, with the
advent of quantum computing,
this only will increase
this percentage.
The life sciences.
I think any breakthrough we
have seen in life sciences,
whether it's the discovery
of the structure of DNA,
of genetic codes,
gene editing, it all
was curiosity-driven research.
And perhaps the biggest story
in the last few hundred years
has been the tremendous
progress in health.
So the fact that lifespan,
life expectancy, in the West
basically tripled in 250 years,
it's amazing fact of history.
I'm not sure where it's
taught in history courses
because it's something that
takes place over centuries.
But because of hygiene
and medical research,
it actually made a
tremendous impact
on the lives of everyone.
And in fact, there is
another thing, which
that will be the
next book, would
be about the uselessness
of the usefulness
of useless knowledge,
because it's
like a third order of facts and
that this very practical thing
gives rise again
to basic research.
And my favorite example
is superconductivity.
Superconductivity was
discovered in 1911.
If you cool
materials, very cold,
electric current
starts to go basically
at no cost, which means that you
can build very strong magnets.
Well, these strong
magnets, of course,
are used in transportation,
but they're also
used in fMRI scanners.
And you could think of the
whole field of neuroscience
only could develop because
of these incredible progress
in magnets.
And these days, many quantum
computer elements also,
of course, really use these
magnets and these very low
temperatures.
But the best
example, the place we
think in the universe
that is the coldest
place in the universe and
has the largest magnets
is actually the Large Hadron
Collider in CERN Geneva.
And it's because of
the magnet technology
and the superconductivity
being used there
that actually led to the
discovery of the Higgs Boson.
And remarkable, the theory
behind the Higgs Boson
is a very close relative to the
theory of superconductivity.
So in some sense, we
went through a full cycle
from an abstract,
physical discovery
through applications back
to fundamental physics.
And it's good to remind
that Peter Higgs--
even in physics itself,
there are long timelines.
Now, it took 50 years
from the original idea
to the Nobel Prize.
So the first decade,
he was totally ignored.
Then it was a decade where
people really read the paper
and become interested.
Then another decade
designing the machine,
a decade building the
machine, and a decade
running the machine.
And when Peter Higgs
at the announcement,
said, with tears
in his eye, that he
was happy to see the
discovery in his lifetime--
I think he was 84 at that time--
he was very serious.
It could easily have took
another decade or two.
Another good example
is the discovery
of gravitational waves
that we all have witnessed.
Roughly, it was
announced a year ago,
but the discovery was
in September 2015.
That was a 100-year
prediction by Albert Einstein.
So he didn't live to
actually see this.
But of course, we, as a
human society, we did.
I always like to
think, in some sense,
cosmologists are a good
framer because they know
exactly what they don't know.
As you know, in cosmology,
we know that roughly 5%
of the content of the
universe is known.
It exists of known material.
There's 95% still
to be discovered.
And I think this is exactly
what cosmologists want to do.
So I feel in basic science,
we are a little bit
like the old
explorers where it has
these kind of wonderful maps.
Part of it was
covered, but then there
was a large part
which was unknown.
And these cartographers would
draw these kind of sea monsters
in it, right, because
our imagination
fills that empty space.
But the role of basic
science is to explore this.
And I want to argue--
and I think I'm probably
preaching to the choir here.
But it's that we
are, in some sense,
in a more exciting moment
in a time of basic research
because often you can
frame it like this.
What is the most important thing
ever discovered in science?
And one way to phrase this, if
all the world would disappear
and you're still able
to communicate one line,
say, one Twitter message,
to the next generation, what
would the hint you would give to
the next generation of budding
scientists?
And my line would
actually be this,
that all matter on the
earth and in the cosmos
consists of particles
a billion times smaller
than everyday objects.
The fact that we have discovered
the building blocks of matter,
of life, is
incredibly important.
I always think, suppose
you give a child a toy.
You could give it a metal car
or one made of LEGO blocks.
And if you go back to
that child, two children,
a few weeks later, the one who
was getting the LEGO actually
would build something else.
So I think actually,
we are now in a phase
where it's really
a matter about,
what are we going to build now
that we discovered the building
blocks of nature?
And we see this in
the material sciences
where now we can basically
build materials atom by atom.
We see this in the life sciences
where we have synthetic biology
can produce things that only
our imagination can think of.
So I would like to
say, in the old model
where the sciences
are exploring nature
and we kind of know what we
don't know so we want to cover
the whole map, we are now
in a stage of development
where we are not
looking at nature,
but we're building
nature ourselves.
So it's basically the space
of everything we can make
and how we find our ways
in this kind vast space.
And I think that is the exciting
moment where basic research is.
So why would you
have basic research?
And I think we can revisit
Flexner's argument.
Well, I think the first
and foremost thing to say
is that clearly,
we want to argue
that knowledge in and of
itself is incredibly important.
And that's true
for the sciences.
That's true for the humanities.
It's true for the arts.
But there are some
extra layers, and that's
exactly where Flexner--
and I'm trying to
add to it-- is we
know that basic science develops
new tools and techniques.
As a particle physicist,
I'm obliged then
to say that the World Wide
Web was developed in terms
of facilitating communications
through thousands
and thousands of
particle physicists
who, in the original
model, weren't
able to read each
other's web pages,
we'd also write
on the web pages.
Then, of course, it's
attracting the best minds
who then can go out.
Again, here I have to say that
theoretical physicists went
into the financial markets and
basically destroyed the world,
I think.
So I should give
them credit to that.
Also important to realize
is certainly here,
I think, as you know,
it's very difficult
to capture the full
profits of basic research
because they will flow
across disciplines.
They flow across regions, across
countries, across generations.
And so in many ways,
it's a true public good.
Economists have
not done a good job
at putting the
right numbers there.
So if you ask the
economists, what
is the return on investment
of $1 spent on basic research,
you'd get all kind of
numbers between 4 and 15.
But that's a big multiplier.
And I would wish, in some sense,
we could argue more particular,
I think, because without
a doubt, as I said,
it's a public good, and it's
something that, in the end,
I think needs to be
publicly supported.
And of course, it leads to
plenty of innovation startups.
And here, close to MIT,
we are, in some sense,
at kind of the very epicenter
of this tremendous effort,
and you are, in some
sense, the embodiment--
Google is, of course,
an embodiment of this.
But if you see how
federal and, for instance,
support for research
has developed--
and I can imagine
Flexner coming back
and, OK, tell us what happened
in the intervening years.
The first part of my story
would be very positive.
Of course, he has seen
that after World War II,
there was this terrific
current of support.
There was the famous report
by Vannevar Bush, "Science,
the Endless Frontier," that led
to the creation of the National
Science Foundation, not
only in this country
but across the world;
incredible increase
in basic research with not
that many strings attached.
And that kind of peaked,
as you see on this graph,
as a percentage of
GDP, around '64,
which was the height both of
the Cold War and the space race.
And then it went down,
and it has been basically
a steady decline.
It's, in some sense,
even only vaguely
correlated with the political
color of the administration.
And we see that in
some sense, the defense
and non-defense components
have been roughly in balance.
So roughly 50% of
what this country
spends on research
and development
will be defense-oriented.
The other one is not.
If you look, for instance,
at the National Institute
of Health and in dollars,
apart from the stimulus
money in 2009, it had basically
declined by roughly 20%,
25% over the last 15 years.
And of course, this point,
as you know very well,
it's threatened by
even more severe cuts
with the president's
so-called skinny budget
of the current administration.
But this had been
worrying trends.
If you look at the
share of R&D expenditure
by the various
resources, you see also
that the corporate
world, in some sense,
has never been very
strongly supportive.
It roughly now
spends, I think, 6%
of all R&D money
on basic research.
So it's typically
something where
public funding and
philanthropy and universities
play an incredible role.
And if you talk to the next
generation, young scientists,
there's a lot of complaint.
And they are worrying
about grants, about jobs.
It turns out that the success
rate for grant application
for young scientists at
this time is roughly half
of what was in the early '80s.
So in some sense,
the senior scientist
around in academia
and elsewhere were
living in a much better
time and are still
in a much better position,
I think, in terms
of the next generations.
So why this kind
of lack of success?
Well, the argument that
Flexner makes is so powerful.
And I think it's good to have
a conversation about this.
There are many forces
that are I think at fault.
Definitely I think the shorter
attention span of politicians,
of companies driving this.
But also there's a
thing that I would
like to call the
knowledge paradox,
because how does science
interact with society?
And there's this kind
of paradox that whatever
we do in research, we
kind of dig deeper.
And so the result
of research are
more difficult to understand.
Now, if you really want
to understand what's
happening in electronic
appliance or in a new drug,
you have to know
a lot of detail.
So in some sense, it
moves infinitely far away.
On the other hand, the
products of science
are everywhere around us--
in our pockets, in our phones,
in our medicines, everywhere.
So I feel this kind of interface
between science and society
becomes this kind
of fractal thing.
It's kind of science
being atomized.
There are these kind
of little pockets
of knowledge, very specialized,
and they're everywhere
around us, but they become
basically invisible.
And it's much more difficult
to make the case, I think,
these days.
And this is something that
Flexner was very much aware
of it.
And I think the most
important point that he makes
in the book-- and I want to
kind of finish on that note,
on that theme--
is curiosity.
He makes basically
another point.
He says there's this wonderful
ability of human beings
to see things that aren't there,
to imagine things that aren't
easy to imagine for most of us.
And it's this ability
that is so powerful,
and it actually is
being used, whether it
be used in companies, in
academic world or an education.
I think that, actually I feel
is, in some sense, perhaps
the most important argument
why we have to create
these kind of environments.
As Flexner writes, curiosity,
which may or may not
eventuate in something useful--
although, somebody said
we have to distinguish
applied research and
not-yet-applied research,
because how can you argue that
something is totally useless
and will be forever useless?
You never know.
For instance, 100 years
ago, number theorists
were very proud to their
field was totally useless
and the beauty of
the prime numbers.
And now, because of coding,
actually, number theory's
at the very center of
cyber security, et cetera.
I have one colleague who says
he wants to prove some big math
theorem, factorization
of prime numbers,
so that he can
liberate his subject
from the chains of applicability
and make it again useless.
So you never know.
But curiosity, as Flexner
writes, it goes back--
it's an outstanding
characteristic
of modern thinking.
It goes back to
Galileo, Bacon, Newton,
and it must be
absolutely unhampered.
And I have a little anecdote.
This is Jacobus van 't Hoff.
He was a chemist.
In fact, he was the
first one to win
the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
He was Dutch.
So at that point, the Dutch
totally cornered the market
of Nobel Prizes in chemistry.
And in fact, his big
insight was that molecules
were three-dimensional.
That is to say if
you take a molecule
and you look at
its mirror image,
it might be a different
molecule and it might have
different chemical reactions.
That was kind of a new concept.
In fact, here you see some
of the models in which he
was kind of demonstrating this.
And he was pretty famous.
I actually went to a high school
which has a big statue to him,
so I passed that
statue every day.
I think we are not honoring
our scientific heroes
in that fashion anymore.
As I said, this kind
of chiral molecules
was a very important thing.
As you know, all
of life sciences
depends on the chirality of
these molecules, from DNA down.
But the point was that he was
criticized as a scientist,
as a young scientist,
by his seniors that he
used too much imagination.
I think at that
point, he was working
at the veterinary school.
And one colleague
said, well, you just
consider it more comfortable
to mount Pegasus, the flying
horse, and just go and
fly to Mount Parnassus
and just declare how things
are instead of painstaking
deriving the results.
And van 't Hoff was so
upset by the criticism
that when he was finally
made a professor,
his inaugural lecture was
about imagination in science.
And he approached the
subject scientifically.
So he took a sample of the
200 most famous scientists
of the last 200 years and
put them in three categories.
The first category
was scientists
without imagination, so
no interest in the arts,
in poetry, in
painting, in music.
The second was those
with imagination.
And there was a third category,
what he called scientists
with perverse imagination.
That is, they wanted
to go to alchemy.
They wanted to do
metaphysical stuff, et cetera.
And in fact, in
that category, it
contains Descartes, Leibniz,
Newton, Ampere, Wallace.
So actually, the real famous
scientists are in that bracket.
And Newton famously
became an alchemist,
and you can perhaps
understand why.
Because as somebody
said, Newton must
have been the
happiest person who
ever lived in the
history of the planet
because only one person can
be the first to discover
that there was a
system in the world.
And of course,
he, in some sense,
invented modern
deterministic science.
And the fact that if you have
unified the laws of gravity
for the heavenly
bodies and on earth
and founded fundamental
laws of mechanics,
why not also find the
fundamental laws of history,
of religion, of alchemy?
And you can make
gold out of lead.
It only takes a
nuclear reaction,
though it was done 10 years ago.
So clearly, his
imagination reached further
than the science of
his time would allow.
And Einstein also famously
said that "Imagination
is more important
than knowledge,
for knowledge is limited to
all we know and understand
while imagination embraces
the entire world."
I put a picture of a magnet
of a young Einstein in here
because you all know the
story that Einstein, I think,
was five-year-old,
was given a magnet.
And he was fascinated--
well, a compass--
fascinated that the
needle was always pointing
in the right direction.
But then he also describes
that he walked with the compass
through the room.
And now, wait a moment,
there must be something
that is steering the compass.
So as a five-year-old,
he was basically
discovering the magnetic field.
And of course, in some
sense, his great contribution
to science was discover
the gravitational field
and think of it as something
permeating all space.
So he clearly had a very,
very bright imagination
at a young age.
And I think we're
not doing enough
to stimulate imagination
and creativity.
There's this famous test.
You have undoubtedly
read about it.
It's a test that's done
with NASA engineers.
And 2% of them pass the test.
And then there
was one person who
said, well, let's take
the test to five-year-olds
and see how they do.
And then 98% pass.
At 10-year-old, only 30%.
At 15 years, 12%.
So I think actually--
I mean, one
instruction we should
give to people in the education
field, don't touch that button.
The imagination probably is
turned on at the very beginning
and we put a lot of effort
in un-learning skills
to imagine and create.
And often then, at universities
and other research institutes,
we work very hard to re-learn
these kind of qualities.
And this might be something I
feel that the only point where
my points differ with Flexner.
Flexner felt that basic research
scholarship is good as it is.
Society should
reward it and just
let them do whatever
they would do.
In some sense, he
was an elitist.
When Einstein came to
the Institute in 1973,
he was invited by President
Roosevelt to the White House.
Flexner intercepted that
letter, and he wrote back.
Well, you will understand
Professor Einstein
is a very important scientist.
He is very busy, and he has
to focus on his research.
Einstein was very upset
when this happened
and made himself be re-invited.
He also then opened
his own mail.
And this might
actually be the reason
why we have this slightly
negative quote about Flexner.
So they didn't go
along very well.
And I think Einstein
actually was,
in some sense, a perfect
example of somebody
who was able to reach a
large audience and spoke--
I mean, he became the
canonical scientist,
not only because of
his scientific work,
but also I think his
moral compass and how he--
one thing I learned, to my
surprise being in Princeton,
is that he spent a lot of time
on these wonderful quotations.
You might think, oh, he
just came up with that.
No, he thought about
it and he sculpted them
just as he sculpted his
mathematical equations.
And when they were done, he
would cut them out and put him
in a wooden box.
So I would like to say he
was actually using Twitter 50
years before it was discovered.
And I think this is
something that we can--
I think there's a large audience
that we can reach out to.
And I want to close with
one final anecdote, which
is that now, a few years ago,
I was on Dutch television
and I just had launched a
website with experiments
for young children.
And it's actually a
pretty popular website.
And they asked me, can
you do an experiment?
So I should have brought it
here, but it's an experiment.
You can do it at home.
So you take a balloon,
fill it with water
and then hold it
above somebody's head.
And then take a
lighter or a match
and try to burn a hole in it.
It will not work.
And I did it, and
then I explained why.
I said, well, you
know, if you have
an empty kettle on the
stove, it gets hot very fast.
If it's filled with water,
it takes a lot of time.
I said, it has to do with
thermodynamical properties
of water, heat capacity.
That's why if you
live close to the sea,
you have a moderate climate.
So I had my little spiel and
explained some basic physics.
So I felt very happy with that.
And the next morning,
I get an email
from a very, very
distinguished Dutch physicist.
They said, well, Robbert,
I saw you on television.
I liked the experiment,
but your explanation
was, of course, totally wrong.
So I got this sinking feeling.
Yeah, I know-- never speak out.
And then he said,
no, no, no, you
didn't show the experiment
to explain thermodynamics.
You did show the experiment
to explain the phenomena
of a law of nature.
There's a scientific
principle that
forbids you to burn
a hole, and that's
why you know that this
party trick works.
And that actually is something
that you should have said.
And I think he's right.
Now, if you ask me if
there's one thing, if I could
wave a magic wand and make
everybody in the world
understand one thing from
science, what would you pick,
I probably wouldn't be able
to do it within one tweet,
but I would like to have
everybody understand
the scientific method, the fact
that you can do experiments,
you can learn about facts,
you can have some idea,
you can disprove,
you learn again,
you do an another
experiment again.
And that has been an
incredibly successful method.
And I think that's something
that we can spread,
and that's something
that people should know.
So I feel there's perhaps a
way to kind of bridge this gap
that I worry about, that we
have this terrific research--
and as I said, I don't
think there ever had been
more opportunities than now.
I think every scientist at every
time in the history of science
has said this, and
they were all right
because it's an exponential
growing function.
So it gets better and
better and better.
We're in this terrific
moment, but we
aren't able to make the case.
And in some sense, society is
kind of starting to decouple.
And I think we have
to cross that bridge,
and again, make the
case that Flexner makes
in an extremely powerful way.
And so perhaps I want
to kind of end by just--
because we are in a kind of
complicated political situation
here and across the
world, but I remind you
that Flexner wrote about
all of this in October '39,
which was, as I said,
not the best of times.
So this is the way
he opens the essay.
"Is it not a curious
fact that in a world
steeped in irrational
hatred which
threatens civilization itself,
men and women, old and young,
detach themselves wholly or
partly from the angry current
of daily life to
devote themselves
to the cultivation of beauty,
to the extension of knowledge,
to the cure of disease, to
the amelioration of suffering,
just as though fanatics were
not simultaneously engaged
in spreading pain, in
ugliness and suffering?
The world has always been
a sorry and confused sort
of place.
Yet, poets and
artists and scientists
have ignored the fact just that
if intended to paralyze them."
So I think these
are very wise words.
They should be
read again, so I'm
very happy that I'm now
on this kind of book tour
with my famous co-author,
Abraham Flexner.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
RICHARD: Thank you very much.
Wonderful talk.
Questions?
AUDIENCE: Thank you for
the fascinating talk.
As you say, you're
preaching to the choir here.
We all came through, one or
another higher, institute
of education.
We've been propagandized
about this quite successfully.
We all believe that, and
I'm not saying I don't.
But one question that's
unclear-- it's clear
that curiosity is a
driver for many things.
But in modern society, research,
including basic research,
has become an industry.
And Flexner, in some sense,
invented that industry
with one small institute.
So when we now have--
I don't know what it is--
millions of people engaged
in basic and
not-so-basic research,
how do we as a society decide
how much money to spend
on that research?
Why do we believe that
distinguished professors
of physics should have upper
middle class lifestyles
and not just be driven
by their curiosity
and maybe funding
for their equipment?
How do we think
about these things?
And I say this as a member
of the class that benefits
from all this, of course.
ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF: It's
a very good question.
And it's, I mean, in some
sense, in its basic form,
would be indeed, how much
time and money and energy
should be spent
on these efforts?
And one thing I find
kind of surprising
is that even as a
society, going--
see, we made lots of
progress, as you said.
In some sense, we have seen
this whole architecture
of the scientific
enterprise being built.
We didn't spend that much
time arguing about why
this particular architecture.
Now, what are the
economic arguments?
How are we--
I'm advocating in
the book of what
you need is a kind
of a well-balanced
portfolio of research projects.
How do we look at this?
I think actually
honestly, we look
in a more deliberate
and sensible way
at financial
investments and how much
risk do you want to take,
how much correlation do you
want between the various
issues, how much long-term, how
much short-term than
we do in research,
because in some sense, it's
a little "fly by your pants"
and intuitive.
One thing we see is
that these days, there
are a lot of
quantifiable metrics,
but they have serious
problems because what
we see is that
what they do, they
drive research around the
world all to the same spots.
So we get this kind of
regression to the mean,
and a lot of boring
research is being done.
So I don't have
the answer, but I
think we should have
a serious conversation
about these issues, also
about what is the percentage,
so to say.
What is the right
percentage to spend?
I know in this company,
you can, if you want,
spend 20% on other projects.
At least it's a number.
So I think societies
haven't put a number there.
I think the first
approximation good
is to take the world
average or something.
And that's often how we
argue, are we behind or ahead
of our competitors?
But I think we need a serious
discussion about this.
And I think in
certain enterprises,
I think particularly
in the life sciences,
the current architecture
is totally unsustainable.
It's been indicated
if every researcher
kind of breeds 10 more that then
have their own research group,
you get an exponential
function that's clearly--
these days, if you're
a life scientist,
you are in your mid-40s when
you get typically your first NIH
grant.
So you basically reach
independence age 45.
That's not very attractive.
And so I think that we need
more research about that.
We have sharper thinking.
What is the role of
corporations or philanthropy?
Who can do what?
And why, as a society,
do we value this?
And as I said, I'm
kind of disappointed
that economists have had such
great difficulty putting kind
of numbers there,
as by the way, they
have in the more broader
field of education.
It's very difficult to
make the case there.
How does an investment
in your education
and the kind of education
lead to, for instance,
your personal gains?
But I here, it's really as a
society that we have to have.
And it's a running
target, so to say,
because science
itself is developing.
It's grown, become
more international.
Some of the costs
of the experiments
are really becoming very large.
And I feel that we spent very
little time discussing this.
We also spend very little
time arguing for science.
Somebody once told me that
the commercial product
with the smallest advertising
budget is kitchen salt--
now, I've never seen a
commercial about kitchen salt,
I think--
but that science spends
less in advertising.
And again, if you think
that we spend $30 billion
from federal money each
year on basic research,
how much of that is used
to kind of spread the word?
I think we just assume that
by diffusion, some of it
will flow.
So the best thing I can
hope is that at least we
have a serious discussion
to give answers,
ideally quantifiable answers,
to the question, the very
good question that you raised.
AUDIENCE: So just something
a little different.
So I noticed, part
of your biography,
that you're also
a trained artist.
Could you speak about that?
ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF: Well,
I'm a failed artist.
So I got my
undergraduate in physics.
And then as my PhD advisor,
Gerard 't Hooft, the Nobel
Prize winner said, Robbert
went to physics, got bored;
went to art school, got even
more bored and went back.
But actually, there's a little
anecdote which I think, for me,
was useful because I usually
make the case that I--
so I spent two years
in art school--
that I learned how to do
research in art school
because when I was a teenager, I
was the character-- and perhaps
many of you are similar.
I got to discover it, the
whole field of science
and would take books and read
and do the calculations myself
and make drawings
and everything.
And I went to college.
And then of course, you
do the standard courses.
And I had very good
grades, but I was basically
just focused on getting good
grades and passing the test.
And I kind of lost interest in
the field and started painting.
Then I went to art school.
I was very serious about that.
I think, that's my career.
But when in art school, I
suddenly felt liberated.
I still remember the moment
I walked into the bookstore.
I felt, now I can buy
a physics book again.
So I bought physics
books, started reading it.
So it was like, OK,
just, this is for fun.
And then I felt, wait a moment.
So there's something there.
But the nice thing in art
school is that success was not
passing a test.
Success was, at the
end of the week,
if you had a big stack of
sketches and materials,
if you have just explored.
And so I made kind
of a deal with myself
I go back into physics
because of my first love,
but I will try to preserve
that approach of the artist.
That is to say, at
the end of the week,
I wanted a big stack,
not the sketches
but of calculations,
and just for fun.
You might think-- and I'll
tell my students all this.
Just, if you learn something,
try to derive it yourself.
Find a way to kind of
internalize the result,
and do some crazy calculation.
The thing I like
best in art school
was that you were forced to do
things that you didn't like.
I like to paint,
and now suddenly I
have to do photography
or printing.
That actually was fun.
It was liberating.
So in some sense, for me,
spending these two years in art
was a shortcut to
a research career.
And so I think that might be a
lesson again, that we are not
always putting the
right emphasis also
in the way in which we
educate generations,
I think particularly
in the sciences
because now it feels like
math and physics and computer
science, it's so easy
to devise a perfect test
because it's so clear what the
right and the wrong answers
are.
So we focus a lot about the
right and wrong answers.
I think we should
focus more on the right
and the wrong questions.
AUDIENCE: So given the
current political climate,
where do you think the center
of learning is right now?
ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF:
Well, it's clearly--
there are lots of forces on it.
And I think it's not obvious
that this country will
be the center.
So let's first
think about clearly,
there is-- if you think of
research, at this point,
it's roughly equally
distributed, I think,
between North America,
Europe and Asia.
But a lot of things
are happening.
But I would say the top
segment is still skewed.
It's still a large percentage
is here in this country.
And I think what I feel
what the United States has,
it has these kind of two
wonderful characteristics,
that first of all, a long,
long history of being
open to other cultures, other
nationalities and other ideas.
It's one of the few
countries that's based
on a very abstract principle.
And the second
ingredient is freedom,
so autonomy of individuals,
but also of institutions.
So both have been
actually blossoming.
And in some sense,
it's remarkable.
Flexner was very critical
about American universities,
and he predicted-- he
had a very dire future.
And he was, like,
totally wrong because
these American universities
blossom in the '40s,
'50s, '60s.
And now, they're everywhere.
So he was wrong about that.
He was also wrong about that
large institutions couldn't
be excellent because
we had places
like Berkeley, which are
public institutions, huge
and the top rank.
So the local environment, I
would say, in this country
is really very well
positioned, also
with kind of a pragmatic,
and empirical attitude,
particularly for the sciences.
I think these
days, it definitely
is at risk because these
two fundamental points,
open to other ideas
and other cultures
and this kind of generous
financial environment
that kind of makes institutions,
as we have here in the Boston
area, remarkable, world-leading
institutions possible,
and the competition is
eyeing these possibilities.
And we all know that
Asia is rapidly growing.
And it's one of the most
fundamental lessons of history
to see that commercial centers
and centers of learning,
they move.
They typically move on
a scale of a century.
I know that [INAUDIBLE]
the commercial center,
at some point, it was in Venice.
And then it moved north to
like Antwerp, Amsterdam, London
and then across the Atlantic.
So there, you can
see these movements
on this kind of scale
of decades and century.
And I think this country
was both the beneficiary
of geopolitics and of
course, of this kind
of terrific financial support.
And both of these I
think are at risk.
So I feel this is a
very dangerous time
because many, many
interventions can do,
but this is really
kind of something
like open-heart surgery.
This is really the
crucial element
that I think kind of pumps both
the commercial and intellectual
heart of this country.
And I think it's at risk.
And I wouldn't be surprised--
so in that sense,
even for Flexner,
it wasn't obvious, as he
didn't write that it had moved.
He said, it might move if
you have strength and will
to do so.
So I think it's at
risk, and I think
that's something that we should
make that case very powerfully,
yeah.
RICHARD: All right, thank
you very much again.
ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
