Details

Nachrichten der Einstein Stiftung Berlin


#2: Valentina Forini

You Will Be Challenged

Foto von Valentina Forini
Photo: Henning Maier-Jantzen

Valentina Forini first graduated in classical piano. Looking for an additional challenge, she decided to study physics. Today, Forini conducts research in string and quantum field theory as an Einstein Junior Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She told us what drove her to follow this path - and why we need more female role models in top-notch science. Photo: Henning Maier-Jantzen 

Zurück zur Übersichtsseite

Intro: "Mostly was curiosity. And then, eventually, it demonstrated itself to be a very, very interesting thing. As, you know probably I had also this stereotype in mind. Theoretical physics is something difficult. You need to be good. You will be challenged. You will be suffering a little bit. And that's somehow - it's very strange, but it attracted me a lot." AskDifferent, der Podcast der Einstein Stiftung. Warum Wissenschaftlerinnenund Wissenschaftler anders fragen.

Leon Stebe: Hi. My name is Leon Stebe. The nature of time, space, matter, and the origin of the universe. These are topics that a theoretical physicist might investigate. Valentina Forini is one of them. She's Einstein Junior Fellow at Humboldt University Berlin. She conducts research in the field of mathematical physics focused on string and quantum field theory. I am deeply impressed by her dedication to this complex world, which we don't see, but which might explain everything. And Valentina is also inspired by classical music as well. So welcome to the show.

Valentina Forini: Thank you very much.

Stebe: Valentina, you have a degree in piano playing. Is that right?

Forini: Yes. It's right.

Stebe: Where's the piano here?

Forini: Well, it's at home. I have actually relatively recently bought a grand piano, a Flügel. I'm very proud of this.

Stebe: So you're still playing after your work here?

Forini: No. That's I wouldn't be honest in saying this. I am playing very rarely. Right now, I'm actually using the piano to accompany my daughter who's very young, but she started to play cello and we play together. But, yeah, no. I'm not playing that much.

Stebe: Is there something that music or piano playing and theoretical physics that both have in common?

Forini: Oh, definitely, yes. And in fact, I have several colleagues who like music, classical music, play music. I would say even more than when you have another kind of career, let's say, you work in the humanities, you would think you have colleagues who are musicians. No. More are in Physics, I think.

Stebe: Really?

Forini: Yeah. Yeah! I have even some proof because for some part of my life I was close to this kind of community in Humanities and there were not so many musicians as I met in Physics. And the reason is that there is a lot of logic and, geometric construction behind, some score that you see. Yeah, I think that's the reason, it's mostly this, a lot of, rationality. It's not only passion. A lot of musician colleagues, so to say, I'm not a professional, but when I was studying, of course, I had a lot of colleagues. They would hate mathematics, but half of them clearly also liked this logical aspect.

Stebe: Is it more than the recreation then? 

Forini: Yes. It's totally fulfilling for the mind. In my case, definitely, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Stebe: And what is science for you? What is your motivation doing this?

Forini: If I have to really summarize, it's like to solve problems, to have something which challenges your mind and you want to to solve it and to explain it. There is something which is not understood in my field, well, then I have to really learn about it, what was done, and then I have to see how to solve these problems, how to go beyond the status quo. And eventually, in my field, one wants to have an explanation of nature. So it's natural science what I do but in mathematical terms.

Stebe: And why theoretical physics for you?

Forini: Well, it's like falling in love because it's something very different from the other kinds of physics. But, well, what I know is that I was always interested in theoretical aspects rather than the experimental facts. So something a little bit philosophical, a little bit! That was the first inspiration also. But then eventually, you see that it's really an incredibly beautiful creative field in which, yeah - you have to reason a lot and the initial intuition was proved by my work. But it's a bit like love. You cannot really explain why you love it so much.

Stebe: Like love? Wow. Yeah.

Forini: That's, it's deep. It's deep. I mean, it's something that you don't control first, you just are interested and you can't - you can't say really why. It's part of your personality, I would say.

Stebe: You can't say why, but how many times you have been already asked by your friends, for example, why do you follow this path? Why do you choose physics?

Forini: If I go back to my initial steps, it was most mostly a curiosity. It was because I didn't really know what it was and I thought I had a grasp on sort of the rest of the possible knowledge. I was a little bit, as a high school student, presumptuous, which in German you say is "selbstgerecht". I thought I had this classical studies at the high school so I studied Latin, a lot of literature, ancient Greek, philosophy, but I was still curious. I knew that there was something very fascinating about another world. And so it mostly was curiosity. And then, eventually, it demonstrated itself to be a very, very interesting thing. As, you know, probably I had also this stereotype in mind. Theoretical physics is something difficult. You need to be good. You will be challenged. You will be suffering a little bit. And that's somehow - it's very strange, but it attracted me a lot.

Stebe: I have a stereotype as wel. I'm a layman when it comes, for example, to string theory but I watched all episodes of "The Big Bang Theory", this US comedy show, and the main character, Sheldon Cooper, a physicist, has worked on the string theory. And with this sitcom, I get interested in this field. It's interesting. So this show did a lot for your profession.

Forini: Yes. Yes. I have to be grateful. We are all grateful, because it was famous. And, also, when I meet people, they immediately say, string theory, Sheldon. And then, I didn't follow the series but at some point I understood that I had to see at least 1 or 2 episodes and it was indeed funny. And in fact, I think in this building right now, there is one of the scientists which talked to one of the creators of this series. And, yeah, it's very fun. It's very funny. Especially, there was an episode, which was string theory versus loop quantum gravity. If you know, it's it's a kind of fight within our circle, but it was very nice because it translated in a fight between two characters. Very very funny. So I used this name, Sheldon Cooper. I used it also in some presentation to have an impact of my audience of young people. And in fact, it had an impact. And, yeah, it's a fiction, you can see, that this stereotype of a nerdish person which is, you know.

Stebe: Yeah, Sheldon is very different. He is very nerdy, maverick, loner. Yeah. But this is not how I would describe you.

Forini: No. No. I'm very different because I was contaminated by this other world, of music. Actually, no. To be honest, also music, when it's done at some level, which was not mine but at least at the level of studies, also in music you can find a lot of nerds. So that's also explains a little bit that I'm not so unfamiliar, but I had, other interests. And as I said, yeah, in the high school. So until 18, 19, I didn't really know what Physics was. I was nerdy but in another sense. So I'm not that Sheldon type, but I like those types. I have a good relation with them. I can understand them perfectly.

Stebe: So it's not a cliche, just?

Forini: No. No. There is always something true about the stereotype and the life we do, I mean, totally encourages the kind of isolation at least. I need to study and also my colleagues. You are a little bit on the the moon sometimes. Today I got a fine because I forgot the ticket. It was not, I forgot the ticket. I forgot to put the lunch box for my child at the kindergarten. I forgot many things. And this happens a little bit often, but maybe that's me.

Stebe: That's not the typical physicist?

Forini: No. No.

Stebe: Let's talk about your expertise. When you close your eyes and you think about your research project, what do you see at first?

Forini: What I see at first is a blackboard, probably, or a notepad or something, even electronic where there are some formulas because this is the thing that we do. We look at formulas, the mathematics behind the physics, and we try to solve, we say analytically or numerically some problem, which is posed by the current research. And then what I see is this kind of daily life, which is very nice. It may be a little bit boring, but in fact, half of the time we discuss with people. So what I see is this. It's kind of, very intellectual work, but also a lot of exchange. At least in my case, there are different types of, researchers. There are also the more solitary ones, the one which do not have also so much exposure. And maybe they come out after two years with a beautiful piece of theoretical physics. And this is another way to do this job, which has my total admiration. In my case, I have a lot of exchange, I learn a lot from colleagues, I try to give my best, I have some, PhD students which are brilliant. And teaching also. Teaching is beautiful and very rewarding.

Stebe: And if you teach, for example, children, how you would describe - you have children?

Forini: Yes.

Stebe: How do you describe to your children what you do?

Forini: Okay. So I could say I could do it better with my daughter who's now seven. I'd say that, at the moment, we know very well how to describe what is the the origin of many things that we see, like, the stars, the movements of the stars, or even the movement of an apple when it falls from your hand. We can describe many things which happen around us, but there are still a lot of questions that we have to answer. How big is the universe or, what is the smallest possible constituent of the matter? Well, I think maybe I wouldn't use these words for with my daughter, but: the smallest thing that you can see. For this, we still have to say something. And then we need to understand this, we need to work a little bit on it by reading something which was written before us from some scientist and then by studying, writing a little bit of formulas like sums, multiplications, but also something more complicated. And then eventually even invent something new, some new mathematics probably or exploit mathematics to get to the an answer to these other problems. And if we get this answer, it's good. But also maybe not immediately, but in some time it will have an application. So my aim is not to apply. Well, to my daughter I would say: I cannot use what I what I'm solving now for anything practical that you eat or you touch or you see, but maybe in 50 years or 40 years, that is eventually what happened with a lot of big discoveries in theoretical physics.

Stebe: And correct me if I'm wrong, but we are talking about the smallest elements in the universe.

Forini: Yes. Exactly. The smallest constituents of what we see. So the string theory, it's a way to describe something we don't see. We are used to think about the smallest constituents as something which has the form of a point or which is located at a certain point or a particle. But the string theory as a description of nature is a way to describe things via strings. So one dimensional objects which should vibrate. And to each vibration, if you want, you can associate a certain particle. And that's the basic idea - probably what is coming also to the lay people. But the mathematics behind it is very rich. And, well, what I have to say immediately and it's the reason why Sheldon Cooper abandoned string theory at some point in the series - as I understood. The main thing to say is that this model, that the smallest constituent of the matter is one dimensional. It's a string vibrating. Well, we can't see these strings. They are super small if they exist at all. So one thing about my field is that you cannot do experiments with it. We don't have accelerators, like the one at CERN, which are powerful enough to see strings, because they if they exist, they are supposed to be extremely small. There is a way to see this, because they have to be quantum objects, relativistic objects, and they have to describe gravity. So if you put together these three things, quantum, relativistic, and gravity, you actually have a scale of energy which is not reachable today. So you don't see them. You don't have experiments, and that's why a lot of physicists think that string theory is totally useless. It's actually luxury way of conducting research to concentrate on string theory. But, you know, the beauty of this model probably comes with all that it triggered around it. Like the mathematics, the models. So it's really a very rich area in which you can find a lot. You can see that?

Stebe: It's so tiny, so small. And with this, it's so complex. How do you train your imagination to cope with this complexity?

Forini: You train little by little, basically, by just loving a little bit of math. You have to sort of be very mathematical. And by this, you understand the abstractness of what you deal with. But it's not just merely that. No. That would be wrong, because there is a lot of physics intuition also in what we do. That's theoretical physics. So physics intuition means that at some point, you have to reason in terms of things that you know, but not those that you see. So the accelerating particle or, how every particle moves at the end, yeah, you can't see them, but you can see the formulas and you can relate to something that you learn in the physics course.

Stebe: So you try to find the world formula?

Forini: Yes. Yes! In fact, string theory is sometimes descirbed, well, not by me, but my field is also sometimes described as the theory of everything - the world formula, and so on. Really it is as simple as this - it's a quantum description of gravity, quantum, which in physics relates to very small things - to the description of very small things. And gravity, as we also imagine it, it's about very big things like our universe, the stars, and so on. So you want to describe this universe in terms of, something quantum. You don't have the math currently unless you have a string theory or other ways to proceed in this way. So string theory is one possible answer to the problem, but it's a theory of everything. Yes. It wants to relate to this world of small and very big things.

Stebe: What did your research teach you about life?

Forini: Okay. There are many things many things. I evolved a lot. I changed a lot via this kind of life. One of the things which I mentioned is that you have to be free from every predjudice exactly in facing a problem, to try to free your mind and try to answer to the naive questions that you think, okay, there is an answer. Yeah. What is the answer so far? This one. Okay. You could accept it. Sometimes you are led to accept the common point of view on that problem. But sometimes you should actually, you know, reject it and then starts from the scratch. So this is something the curiosity towards each kind of questions that comes, which is, of course, about the subject - but, really it's about being open. And also another thing, of course, being very prepared. I mean, this is always a problem for me. I really have to study all the time, and I feel ignorant all the time. So you have to have a very good knowledge of what was done so far. But, you know, open. Very open.

Stebe: How do you deal with setbacks when some of your math you did doesn't work? What do you do in this situation?

Forini: Terrible. I have to cure this. Yeah. This is terrible. I always tell the students not to get depressed, that it's part of the job and so on. But personally, I get a little bit depressed and frustrated. So now, actually, I'm trying really to deal with it, because typically I need to think about something else because of this frustration, something that's distracting. So you have to cope with this, and you have to just move or open the window or do something else, because that's a typical thing to happen to us. I mean, nothing comes super easily. It's very common to get depressed because the calculations are complex and they need some study.

Stebe: And you need to be patient?

Forini: Yes. Patience is very important. Indeed, that's one thing which I learned. I was very impatient, in the past. and now I learned that patience is a a virtue. Actually it is described as a virtue in a lot of sayings, old ones. I never understood this as a child. You you can't also. As a human, as a child, you are impatient. Or as even a teenager, you are totally passionate. Everything should come to you. But, yeah, no. Patience is very important in this job.

Stebe: Why are there just a few women working in theoretical physics on such a level you do?

Forini: That's a very interesting question. I say that I do a lot of mathematics and so on, but in mathematics, there are a lot of women that at least study it. There are even conferences. One conference has the title "String Theory and Gender" because my field is really underrepresented in terms of women. So to this question, I think one of the possible answers is that this stereotype of theoretical physics being extremely difficult, genius matter, it sort of propagates and it reaches girls at the earliest leve

Stebe: It's very spread that the geniuses are all men. I mean, creative workers like, torchestra directors, even writers, artists, of a certain kind, they're just men. And theoretical physics, Einstein, you know, Max Planck, all these names that come to your mind are like this. This is typical for every single figure because women hadn't access to study until very recently. But I would say the genius, is a little bit more male in the stereotype.

Stebe: So we need more role models?

Forini: Yes. We need more role models. I believe so. And I in fact, I'm a supporter of, some proactive measures to have more women because I think that the role model is very important. For me, for example, I had no role mode

Stebe: And, really, for example, having a family and doing this job, it's really hard, I have to say. It's really super hard because there is simply no time. And because we, as women, have some sort of idea of how the family should be run, which is the idea of our mothers, and it's an old idea. I have some stereotype of what a woman should do and what a scientist should do. And so it's very difficult to relate.

Stebe: And how important is diversity in your field, in your research field? I mean, how important would it be to have more women in this position?

Forini: So I don't know how important because there is no diversity at the moment. There is an increasing number of women and this is very interesting. What I wanted to say is that male scientists should be having the same problem as us. But what we see in fact, it's not this. Sometimes I dream to have the same life of some colleagues which have this kind of life - that they come in the office and there is someone super nice at home that they love, which is caring about all the rest. Well, it's not even anymore like that this idea is so strong. But it remains an idea that there is one person which is more responsible for that area. And even though women work, it's even worse, I would say. Mhmm. For me, like, that I work, but I still have this sort of pressure from my, I don't know, culture. That I have to care about a lot, which concerns the education, for example, of my children. What they do beyond school, who looks after them, the kind of personal activities, and so on. I think - this is even though I have the most enlightened partner - I still have this kind of responsibility, which is sort of implicitly on me. And we need more men sensible to this, sensitive and sensible. But it's an interesting question. Why, for example, medical doctors are now even more than 50% of them women and something different is not happening. And it's complex. There is the STEM subject. No? This technology, science - I think of this part of the stereotypes - The toys. The toys in the shops, which are still for females, still for boys - there are chocolate eggs for girls. You can't however fight against everything. So you have to relax and to do your own little things towards a good direction. Otherwise, I would be angry all the time for what I see around me. So my solution to this is to encourage me and the other ones to do little steps in the good directions, measures, you know, through laws, but also through comments. I mean, we have to change so many things. The language. I'm a feminist. It was a bad word. It's still probably perceived as something bad. I would try to to change it in something very good. That it should be common for men. That's one of the biggest issues now, I would say. We should all aim towards this.

Stebe: Valentina Forini, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time today. It was great talking with you. Thank you for your fascinating insights.

Forini: Thanks to you. Many thanks to you.

Stebe: And all the best for your research.

Forini: Thank you.

Stebe: Valentina Forini, Einstein Junior Fellow at Humboldt University Berlin. Ask Different. This is the podcast from the Einstein Foundation. My name is Leon Stebe. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast, and please tune in next time. Till then, Good bye!