Written In The Stars
When Professor Brian Cox isn’t lighting up our TV screens, telling us about the universe like a cosmic David Attenborough with a haircut, he’s messing around with particle accelerators in Geneva. Somehow, he’s found time to pen a second book with his former lecturer, Professor Jeff Forshaw. Craig Fitzpatrick talks to the two about The Quantum Universe, the possibility of time travel, and The Smiths.
Craig Fitzpatrick, 28 Oct 2011
In the offices of Penguin Ireland, particle physicist Brian Cox is venting his frustration as his co-author and close pal, theoretical physicist Jeff Forshaw, looks on. Well, we say frustration. It may be impossible for the perma-smiling, floppy-haired TV favourite charged with ‘making science sexy’ to come across as anything less than disarmingly lovely. Even when he’s expressing irritation at the media’s insistence on bringing up his pop star past (apologies Professor), he seems more wide-eyed and fascinated than anything.
Given all he’s achieved since then – presenting for BBC’s Horizon, his own Wonders series, receiving an OBE – the constant references to his time behind the keys for ‘90s pop act D:Ream must grate by now
“I’m bordering on being sick of that,” he admits in soft Mancunian tones. “Simply because it was so long ago. I’m far better known for science now, particularly if I go into schools. It initially started as, ‘Look, there’s a science teacher who’s been on Top Of The Pops!’ But kids today don’t remember Top Of The Pops. Now I’m the person who works at CERN and makes TV programmes.”
So if we refer to Cox and Forshaw as the ‘Morrissey and Marr of Quantum Mechanics’ in this piece they won’t be best pleased?
“No, no, we will!” they both shout in unison as Brian backtracks. “That’s a great reference to Manchester!”
“I presume I’m Johnny Marr?” asks Forshaw. We’ll let the two of them work that out themselves.
“The thing is,” says Cox. “I like a steak, so that rules me out of Morrissey’s good books straight away.”
He could always be Mike Joyce…
“The drummer. That will do! And, of course, because our new book has a Peter Saville cover, it’s linked very firmly to the Manchester music scene. It looks like a Madchester album. I don’t mind being compared to them.”
And so to their new work, The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen. The second book on which the two have collaborated, it aims to explain quantum physics in layman’s terms whilst taking care not to dumb anything down. Remarkably, you can read it over a rainy weekend, as this writer did.
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