One fine day I was going about my business when I heard that the Maths Tower at Manchester University was to be demolished. I was shocked. To me it was an inspirational icon of learning, the thing that put the campus on the skyline, on the map, and on the picture postcards. I used to sit on the seventeenth floor in a class, learning about gates and induction from the likes of Tom Kilburn, godfather of Computer Science. I listened intently with the cityscape before me and Jodrell Bank behind. I learned a lot in that Maths Tower. It shaped my life, it was my beacon. And now it’s gone.

Copyright © 2005, N. J. Higham

Yes, I know buildings don’t last forever. But the building that replaced it is the Tin Drum, a thousand-seat lecture theatre for commercial seminars, part of a Social “Sciences” development, which in turn is part of a new vision for a 21st century campus. In this 21st century vision, the new mathematics building isn’t the Maths Building. It’s called AMPSS. It’s shared with other schools. And it’s on the edge of campus. Yes I’m sure it’s more modern, and more practical. But it’s out on a limb. It just isn’t so important any more. And moreover, UMIST is no more. The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology no longer exists. It has been fused with the rest of The University of Manchester. The prospectus now shouts old stone, a retrograde vision that talks of heritage and 1824 instead of the white heat of modern technology. And the list of Humanities courses is so very much longer than the Engineering and Physical Sciences. Things have changed, and I don’t much like it.

Who am I to complain? Computers were the next big thing when I was starting out. Hence I’m in IT, and it’s served me well. I live in a place called Sandbanks. No, not quite Sandbanks, because Sandbanks is next door. I live in a place called Lilliput. There really is such a place. It’s a comfortable world of beach and pool, ten minutes to work, quality of life. There’s time for living and time for wine, and time to do the things you want to do. My interest is physics. It’s more than a hobby. It’s more of a passion, one that has grown deeper as I’ve grown older. I’m deeply curious about the world, I want to know how the universe works. Doesn’t everybody? No. The sound of a stylus slewing across an album. My teenagers don’t. The wife and I have two teenage children, and when the time arose for choices and courses, I was disappointed. Both the boy and the girl have dropped their science subjects. I asked them about it, talked to them. They told me physics at school was dull. They weren’t taking it forward. What can you do? You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. They are simply not interested in science. It’s my fault. I wasn’t paying enough attention, either to them or their schooling. I didn’t notice that the curriculum had changed. I didn’t notice how the dead hand of Health & Safety has turned it from Van Der Graaf generators into bookwork and pendulums. I’m not sure of the underlying reasons, but whatever it is, it’s real, it’s happening, and I didn’t realise until it was too late. Suddenly I woke up. I learned of physics departments closing down, and other science departments too, and it set my alarm bells ringing. I read that the number of A-level students taking physics has fallen 56% in 20 years, and I felt a shiver. This is serious. What are you going to do about it?  



I left it too late for my own children. But perhaps, I said to myself, perhaps I could do something to enthuse other people’s children. Or laymen. Perhaps I could use my skills to make physics a little more interesting, a little more accessible, a little more fun. Maybe I even could appeal to the sort of person who gets the electrician in to replace a halogen spotlight. I say that because there’s a standing joke in our house, that I’m the only one who can change a lightbulb. But somehow it isn’t funny. Somehow it’s tragic. People used to understand their technology, now fewer folk do. Some can talk the talk and press the buttons, but few of them have more than the vaguest concept of how things work. They can’t fix a car, and some don’t even know how to open the bonnet. We replace entire machines because nobody understands. There’s a drift, a tide, and we’re swimming against it. The ordinary person of the 21st century understands less than the ordinary person of thirty years ago. And slowly, insiduously, it’s getting worse. Something must be done, I said to myself. And if you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.

So there I was, determined to make a difference. I do have a skill. It’s subtle, understated, you don’t always see it. Like I was saying, I’ve spent my years in IT, where we work hard to keep things simple. It’s all to do with language, the right language. A good system is clear and understandable, organised in a top-down structured fashion so you can look at a picture and get a feel for it quickly. Then you can dig down a level and get a handle on a few more things, and keep on digging until you get to the bottom of it. Every step of the way you’re seeing order, discipline, clean functionality, understanding. It’s all so easy when you make it look easy. It’s all so obvious when it’s all done right. That’s what Systems Analysis is all about. You call a spade a spade and make sure it does what it says on the can. You learn to think clearly and logically, and when you do it right, nobody knows that you did it right. But you know you did, because you’ve seen what happens when people get it wrong. Because if it’s not done right, if it’s complicated, if you can’t understand it, it means somebody screwed up. You wonder how people can get it so wrong.



Where would I start? At the beginning of course, with the basic concepts. I’d explain them simply and logically in friendly fashion that made physics fun. After all, as Einstein said: If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, you don’t understand it yourself. No problem. I mean, we’re talking Popular Science, not Rocket Science.  Easy, no problem.



No problem? Big problem. The problem was that when I tried to explain those basic concepts, I found I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain it to my grandmother. I consulted my books and searched the internet, I delved deep, I read substantial papers, but I just couldn’t find the answers. Then I looked at the mathematics, and thought about it. I applied my Systems Analysis experience. I broke down the problem and shuffled the pieces and checked the functionality of every component. I worked it out. I found what my problem was. Mathematics is a vital tool for physics. We can’t do physics without it. But the basic concepts I was trying to explain is where the mathematics starts. And whilst I take a top-down approach, the mathematics is bottom-up. The basic concepts were base mathematical terms, like E, and m and t and c and g. I was trying to dig under the axioms, the postulates, the things we take for granted. I realised then that whilst mathematics is a vital tool for physics, when it comes to basic concepts, it just doesn’t have a handle. It doesn’t offer any grasp. Don’t get me wrong. With mathematics we calculate and predict, and then conduct experiments to confirm these predictions. It’s vital. But mathematics shouldn’t be the only tool in the box. It can’t do it all. It can’t explain the basic concepts. That’s like trying to understand the Jury System using legal shorthand, or teaching English in a foreign language. You just can’t do it.



I understood then why Relativity and Quantum Physics have not been reconciled. Relativity is macroscopic and top down. Quantum Physics is microscopic and bottom up. It isn’t just a gap between them, they’re headed in different directions, and they’ve missed each other. And to get to the bottom of why, I had to get to the bottom of those basic concepts. That’s when the fun began.

I'm no crank.