Carlo Rovelli on Helgoland in conversation with Marcus du Sautoy

Join us to hear master story teller and theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli in conversation with Marcus du Sautoy - the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University – as they discuss a revolutionary idea that transformed the whole of science and our very conception of the world. In his new book Helgoland, Carlo Rovelli guides us through the extraordinary story of the quantum, the debates it raises, and his own foundational contribution to the field. The book opens a century ago on a treeless windswept island in the North Sea, Helgoland, where the young Werner Heisenberg, aged just 23, had retreated to think and had an idea, “one of the most vertiginous of Nature’s secrets ever looked upon by humankind, an idea that would transform physics in its entirety – together with the whole of science and our very conception of the world.” Heisenberg had begun to glimpse the strange beauty of a world in which nothing exists until it interacts with something else, forever causing a rip in our all-too-solid conceptions of reality. This is the story of the bright young men who together with Heisenberg completed the theory of quantum mechanics. Their science has given us modern technology, yet it remains enigmatic, swarming with startling ideas such as ghostly waves, distant objects seemly magically connected to each other, and cats that are both asleep and awake. Drawing off a lifetime of reading across the sciences and the arts, philosophy and neuroscience, Rovelli guides the reader through the far-reaching general implications of thinking of reality as a vast network of relations, of which we ourselves are just a component. Now, a century on from the discovery of quantum theory, Carlo Rovelli helps us to truly understand the world we live in. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. His books Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality is Not What it Seems and The Order of Time are international bestsellers which have been translated into 43 languages and have sold over 2 million copies worldwide in all formats. Rovelli is currently working in Canada and also directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, France. Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is also a Professor of Mathematics and a Fellow of New College. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016. In 2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research made by a mathematician under 40. In 2009 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Faraday Prize, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science. He received an OBE for services to science in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. This talk was recorded at 5x15 online in April 2021. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories